From the beginning of advertising on social networks in 2004 to 2022, a drastic increase in SMM was recorded, positioning itself as a direct competitor to television and radio advertising.
In 2023, 4.76 billion people used social networks, which is 59% of the world’s population.
Marketing on social networks is a useful tool for building a brand, increasing sales and attracting an audience to the desired website. In addition to achieving direct communication with potential customers, SMM also has the advantage of offering detailed analytics of user behavior and measuring the success of advertising campaigns.
There are three characteristics of marketing on social networks that give priority to successful advertising, namely: connecting the brand and the user, interacting with the target group and collecting customer data. It’s safe to say that social media marketing has transformed the way brands reach out to target audiences.
Nowadays, social media marketing strategies are crucial for the successful business of brands.
Although we can say that SMM is an extremely profitable form of marketing, it requires consistent engagement and, in some cases, can cause unwanted negative feedback that can threaten the brand’s reputation.
The detailed analytics and metrics that advertising on social networks provides improves the ability to optimize marketing campaigns, but we must remember that SMM is not available to everyone, so the importance of the traditional way of advertising still has its role in the world of marketing.
For a successful SMM, experts recommend the following 6 items:
- Align the objectives of marketing efforts with business objectives
- Precise definition of buyer persona
- Audit of the current performance of SMM
- Creating a publication calendar
- Creating high-quality content
- Performance monitoring and optimization in accordance with the same
Another advantage of marketing on social networks compared to traditional marketing that can only track sales, is that SMM, in addition to directly tracking conversions, can also measure product recommendations among users through content sharing. By creating the so-called ¨sticky content¨ (attractive content that instantly attracts the attention of users) enables brands to grow quickly and achieve greater reach and engagement.
It is the aforementioned content sharing option that makes SMM a particularly successful form of advertising, connecting existing customers with potential ones, which, of course, contributes to increasing the number of conversions – the ultimate goal of marketing efforts.
It is important to mention the so-called ¨earned media¨ which refers to brand promotion through reviews and recommendations.
When we talk about analytics and success metrics of SMM campaigns, it is important to pay attention to 6 main factors, namely: engagement, impressions, reach/virality, share of voice (how far brand awareness spreads in the online sphere), referrals (which channel the user arrives at the destination page) and, of course, the conversions themselves.
Finally, we can say that the advantages of SMM are that it is a powerful channel for reaching and engaging with a large audience, which helps to increase brand awareness and recognition itself. Direct communication with the target group can contribute to strengthening relationships and encouraging user loyalty.
SMM is definitely a cheaper marketing option compared to traditional advertising, which makes it particularly attractive and useful for smaller or newly founded companies.
As already mentioned, the option of sharing content contributes to increasing the number of visitors to your website or blog, and thus the possibility of increasing the number of conversions. In addition, SMM offers detailed analytics and real-time campaign performance metrics, enabling instant interaction and ease of communication.
Social media marketing also has the advantage of being broad as well as targeted. Content sharing and audience engagement contribute to the spread of brand awareness among users and their friends and families. Very precise targeting of the target group by age, gender, interests, etc. offers the possibility of optimizing the use of the available budget.
Despite all the mentioned advantages of SMM, we must emphasize that it also has some disadvantages and complications. Building a strong presence on social networks requires great engagement on the part of the brand and consistent publication of high-quality content.
In order for your social media advertising efforts to be successful, you need to have a deep understanding of the nature and ever-increasing changes in the algorithms of individual social networks. Each platform is different in some ways, and for this very reason, it is important to understand the functionality and current algorithm of a particular platform.
