It’s official. Social Media is now the number one preferred digital marketing channel used by businesses according to the Clutch 2018 Digital Marketing Survey (1).
In fact, just with small business owners it was found that the majority of small businesses have just a website and a social media presence. With a social media profile being now the main way a business markets itself online, with 62% using social media while 61% using a website, according to Clutch (2).
This has meant that social media continues to dominate the business marketing landscape and the way they promote themselves. This has also seen a large shift in marketing budgets.
I had recently asked some of our clients which industry which channels had they previously been invested in and what is the difference today. A large majority of those I asked has indicated that while 2-3 years ago, they were heavily invested in search (SEO & Adwords). Today, a majority of their digital budget focus is on email and social marketing.
WHY IS SOCIAL MEDIA PREFERRED TODAY OVER OTHER FORMS OF DIGITAL MARKETING?
With the ability to reach such a large audience for a minimal advertising budget, and also to have a platform where you can readily engage with your target audience. Social provides the perfect gateway to the marketplace for many businesses.
Today on Facebook, the average cost for 1000 impressions is around $20. When you consider that these impressions are largely targeted, this outweighs any advertising benefit you may receive from more traditional or even other digital channels.
This easily allows small business a new marketing platform at a price that has never been available to them before. Gone are the days on spending $400 on a newspaper ad, and wishing for the best. Or spending thousands on an expo, just to meet some of your target audience. Today you can get in-front of your target audience with just a couple of dollars. It is still the cheapest top of sales funnel marketing you can do in digital marketing. See this previous article we wrote, on how much you can need to spend on a campaign to get a result.
It also allows a business to easily scale its marketing activities. As results are obtained from social media marketing, that re-investment can easily be made to increase ad budget and capture even more of an audience. Currently Facebook, the world’s largest social media platform, has 2.3 billion active monthly users online. This means your chances of getting in front of your target audience are pretty much a guarantee. It just comes down to the strategy employed and how you utilise the audiences your targeting. This has a bigger engaged reach than any other single channel in digital marketing.
The amazing part of social media, is that with some of the platforms (notably Facebook, Instagram and Linkedin), you can actually collect data on your audiences that are engaging with you, store it and re-market to them to increase your overall brand value with these audiences. Creating touch points through social media, is much easier than any other digital marketing channel used currently. This is much easier to do than most other forms of digital marketing.
If you’ve read to this point, you’re likely very interested in the above and should give us a call for a strategy session. Our number is (02) 8069 9796 (02) 8069 9796 if outside Australia), or message us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/attentionexperts. You can also book a meeting with us via our website at www.attentionexperts.com – I would be very happy to run through some of the above strategies with you in more detail.
(1) clutch.co/agencies/digital-marketing/resources/how-businesses-use-digital-marketing-2018
(2) clutch.co/agencies/digital/resources/small-business-digital-marketing-survey-2018
