Is Social Media Marketing valuable?

With the rise of Web 2.0, and social media becoming an important online medium for marketers, the real question is whether marketing through social media is truly effective or not?

According to Hubspot, 92% of marketers in 2014 claimed that social media helped increase their online presence and traffic on their website. According to Forbes , the benefits of using social media can be broken down into 10 points.

1) Increased brand recognition
2) Increased brand loyalty
3) Customer opportunities to convert
4) High conversion rates
5) High brand authority through credibility
6) Increased inbound traffic
7) Decreased Marketing Costs
8) Increased SEO
9) Richer customer experiences
10) Improved customer insights

While the effects of social media on business may be hard to quantify, services such as Klout and Radian6 can help with such. Nonetheless, it is easy to say that it does make managing customers easier. Firstly, by using social media, a company can directly approach consumers with complaints, especially through hubs such as Twitter and Facebook. A prime example of this could be when United was blamed for breaking a musicians guitar. There was an outcry from the consumers for United not stepping up and taking responsibility for their wrong doings. Many consumers tweeted about this problem, and United representatives were able to address each complaint individually. By responding to problems immediately, it made most consumers more at ease.

Furthermore, consumers view Facebook and Twitter as social media platforms, and less like marketing campaigns. This could be valuable to a company, as consumers may view information posted on these websites as valuable and credible information, as supposed to a marketing stunt.

Marketing online is relatively cheap with respect to billboards and print ads. By using social media as a marketing platform, consumers may be able to see what a company has to offer that they did not know of before.

Lastly, knowing what your consumer wants and being able to deliver quickly truly makes a brand amiable by its customers. The more consumers see the follows, shares, or likes of a certain marketing campaign the more they will be willing to look at it, and find it credible.

In all, it is easy to say that social media is an effective tool for marketers. This is; however, only if the marketer knows how to use all the tools efficiently and effectively to capture the market.