Social Media Marketing has Become Essential in Attracting More Customers, Sales and Converting Site Visitors into Paying Customers

• Social media marketing allows companies to create a connection with their target audience and acknowledge problems immediately.
• Social media marketing allows customers to find a company they did not know existed and companies to find customers they did not know existed.
• Social media marketing is imperative because Americans spend an average of 37 minutes on social media a day which is a higher time-spend than any other major Internet activity.

In recent times, marketing has perpetually become a dynamic landscape in which norms are diversified daily. There has been a shift in the market as companies focus on engagement and assurance rather then selling. If done properly, social media marketing can constitute to more customers, sales and conversions, as it becomes an essential part in a companies successful marketing campaign. Starbucks has been particularly successful in social media marketing as they are known for replying to individual tweets in order to listen to what their customers are saying and provide feedback. Because Starbucks has created dialogue with their customers, they have seen their audience base prosper. 


Companies use their social media accounts to construct brand loyalty with their audience in order to build trust while simultaneously creating brand awareness. 

In order to create a profitable marketing campaign,  it is imperative of all companies to establish brand loyalty. This is when consumers repeatedly buy the same brand of goods despite a different companies attempt to  gain their adherence. Social media has become the  most accessible and economical way to achieve  this. Commercial businesses now have a medium  in which they can communicate directly with their customers, which in turn stimulates consumers to  continue to be brand loyal. A study published in the March 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review  reported that Facebook pages can increase customer loyalty by 36% and consumers using the  brand’s Facebook page held a higher emotional attachment and loyalty to the brand. Continually, through social media sites such as Twitter, information is rapidly shared and spread through retweets and mentions of a company, which increases word of mouth marketing because consumers have access to “freer and faster” information. According to Nielsen, 92% of consumers believe recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising. By effectively using the social media platform, companies are giving consumers are reason to talk and an attainable way to do it. Sequentially, this builds a trust with customers. This also expands brand awareness because more people will be seeing and discussing a company’s brand name creating an organic exposure and the name also appears in search results on the Web. Dr. Hank Boyd, a Clinical Associate Professor in the Marketing Department at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, says that firms have marketing intelligence, are constantly brailing the culture and make decisions accordingly. Many social media sites have added a feature called “Group Functionality” which allows users to search for a specific topic of interest and subscribe to updates from those topics. Also, customers become familiarized with the brand and it becomes recognizable after seeing a consistent presence on multiple social media platforms. 

Furthermore, social media marketing humanizes a company’s brand name as it reiterates the company’s mission and assists users in feeling more connected to the company and product they are potentially purchasing. The consumers feel at ease knowing there is an actual face and voice behind the hefty brand name. Providing customers with personalized assistance increases trust in the company as a whole as consumers derive a positive experience. Customers are constantly voicing their opinions about a product or company through social media, which requires intensive monitoring and fast responses from companies to fix the negative issues or thank their customers for being loyal. As a result, companies typically have a standard method for processing and tracking customers’ messages as all requests receive the same attention. There is constant communication between consumers and producers and social media is the liaison between the two. This is proven as a study conducted by HubSpot State of Inbound in 2013 recorded that 43% of all marketers have found a customer via LinkedIn and 36% of all marketers have found a customer via Twitter. By companies gaining feedback from their consumers, it strategically puts the company in a situation in which they can keep their customers satisfied and frames the company as customer-centric. Boyd says that it is imperative that companies listen to their customers to gain valuable information rather than providing their customers with too much information. 

Study's have shown that companies rely heavily on social media marketing to improve conversion rates. 

Study's show that social media marketing is a valid marketing technique and that overall it has enhanced companies marketing strategies. 83% of marketers have stated that social media is important for their business and 84% of Business to Business marketers use social media according to Aberdeen. Also, social media has had a 100% higher lead-to-close ratio than outbound marketing. By constructing a sound social media base and through the theory of social proof, which states that people assume the actions of others reflect correct behavior, a company can improve conversion rates. The National Speaker Association released a statement saying, “95% of people are imitators…not initiators…so people are persuaded more by the actions of others than by any proof we can offer.” Social proof has become the greatest force of buying decisions as the Internet has become a social environment as seen through blogs, comments, Facebook “likes” and twitter “retweets” and also the idea of the “wisdom of the crowd.”

Social media steadily influences marketing because without it, incoming sales are restrained to people who are accustomed to the brand name. However, each individual social media site that a company has is another opportunity or link back to their brand name and product. As a result, the bigger presence and quality information a company provides, the higher the chance they will have at generating a greater amount of inbound traffic leading to a continuation of conversions. According to Hubspot, over 84% of participants found that increased traffic occurred with as little as 6 hours per week invested in social media marketing.

Social media marketing has increased in popularity among companies as it is an easy way to cut down on advertising costs.

Another major benefit to social media marketing is the immense amount of money that companies save due to decreased marketing costs. All social media accounts are free and essentially are the most effective form of marketing as companies are able to execute interactive techniques. Therefore, companies are spending less money on paid ads to market their products and instead creating blogs, twitter accounts, Facebook pages and more in order to advertise their services for free. By doing this they add validity and credibility to their brand name. Furthermore, companies are saving on recruitment costs as they can leverage through the social media sites to find new employees. 

In conclusion, it is the responsibility of every company to stay connected to the ever-changing social media platform if they want to stay a competitor in the market. The longer companies wait to indulge in social media marketing, the greater risk they are running and the more they have to lose. Competitors are constantly joining social media platforms because of how easy it is and reaping the full benefits from it. Therefore, in order to launch a successful marketing campaign, one of the companies main focuses should be on their social media marketing.