Social media marketing has been an important part of modern-day business. According to Dankwa (2021), consumers worldwide showed interest in making purchases from businesses that had a social media presence. Today, many businesses have social media presence across the different social media platforms available in their location, with Facebook and Twitter being leading platforms for businesses in the United States. With the continuously evolving technology, businesses will continue to maintain their social media presence to remain relevant in the ever-competitive business world.
One of the excellent ways a business can use social media to increase exposure and revenue is by collecting leads on online platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. According to Zhang et al. (2017), this enhances a business’s visibility by equipping it with relevant information of who their competitors are and keeping up to date with any changes in the market. A significantly fruitful way of collecting social media leads is directing referrals and traffic to a page that collects contact information such as email addresses.
In the long run, this increases the sales cycle of a business. Further, it keeps expanding the business’ reach by continually updating the email newsletter list and other promotional strategies. However, for businesses to have email capture tools, they should be willing to sacrifice funds and time to secure the tools and make the tools work for them.
Running promotions on social media through ads and sending email newsletters can greatly boost revenues. Though when conducted on social media platforms such as Facebook it is an effective way of improving business’ presence, enterprises have to pay the cost of using third-party apps such as Cloudfire to enhance their visibility (Dankwa et al., 2021). Additionally, almost all media networks where this strategy works require businesses to abide by their rules and service terms.
Thus, businesses are limited from doing some types of promotions online as all products promoted must be legal. Additionally, promotional mediums, for instance, ads, should not be misleading or defamatory. Therefore, for businesses to carry out fruitful product promotion on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, they should pay third-party enhancements such as Cloudfire to enhance their promotional experience better.
Another way of promoting exposure and revenues is by driving referrals to their website using social media. According to (Kolb 2017), businesses can achieve this by creating automated publishing queues that redirect clicks to the business’ website. With time, increased traffic may be converted into sales through robust customer management strategies that make guests’ experience at the landing page helpful. With the use of referrals, businesses can reach out to a wider audience they could not have reached through direct marketing on their social media marketing channels. Further, working in collaboration with other companies using the same modes of referrals makes a business increase its exposure to networking sites (Kolb, 2017).
In many cases, contracting bloggers or social media influencers for mentions enables businesses to attract the right audience to their website. However, for businesses to successfully record profits from referrals on social media mediums, they must be willing to sacrifice huge sums of money because most influencers are expensive but worth the contract.
Businesses can increase their exposure and revenues by using social media mediums for Public Relations (PR) function. The modern-day consumer is selective when it comes to comparing brands before making a purchase. According to Dankwa (2021) research, a large percentage of clients opt to purchase from brands they follow on social media platforms. Therefore, this means that using these networks for PR services can greatly improve revenues.
Though this can benefit businesses with a positive PR experience, an exact opposite can result if clients are not satisfied with their services. Social media is a powerful business tool that comes with the cost of criticism and negative perceptions from the audience. Crafting a good social media PR strategy either for Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram can inflate revenues by big margins. In case a business finds it difficult securing a large number of followers, hiring social media influencers serves the magic since their massive following could be used as an effective way of reaching out to a larger audience.
Conclusively, social media mediums such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are becoming increasingly vital components of any modern-day business. By creating social media presence, businesses gain a competitive advantage over those without since modern-day consumers are interested in sellers they follow online. Therefore, businesses can establish their social media presence and increase their revenue and exposure by using media to gather leads and using their social media addresses for PR purposes.
Additionally, conducting promotional initiatives online and using referrals to increase traffic on their websites effectively boosts exposure and sales. Although these effective strategies work well for most businesses, new entrants should be ready to sacrifice huge sums of money to enhance their exposure. This could be through paying for mentions by social media influencers, purchasing email capture tools, or using third party enhancers to boost their ad’s presence.
References
Dankwa, D. D. (2021). Social media advertising and consumer decision-making: the mediating role of consumer engagement. International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising, 15(1), 29-53. Web.
Kolb, B. (2017). Tourism marketing for cities and towns: Using social media and branding to attract tourists. Taylor & Francis.
Zhang, Y., Trusov, M., Stephen, A. T., & Jamal, Z. (2017). Online shopping and social media: friends or foes? Journal of Marketing, 81(6), 24-41. Web.