Social Media has been heralded as the ultimate marketing game changer, the end of traditional marketing, and in some cases as just “the future”, whatever that means. Unfortunately, if you’re on a small budget and you’re not in an inherently interesting industry- that might not always work out.
It can be incredibly disheartening to spend time, money, and effort on your social media efforts, only to get a tepid response and few to no leads in return.
What's the Point of Social if You Aren't Generating Leads?
Well, there’s more to it than the leads that you’re directly generating right now. Let’s take a look at why you should probably stick it out, even if you’re not seeing a lot of conversions over social.
Social Media has Become Part of Branding
After your website, social media is your business’ next most important home base, and an important status symbol. Social isn’t just about getting new leads, it’s also about not driving them away. Your number of followers, the content you post, how you communicate on your profiles, and how frequently you interact all play a huge role in how you’ll be perceived.
Not having a profile at all essentially makes you appear non-existent, while a lack of recent posts could indicate that you’ve gone out of business. Frequent posts that aren’t visually appealing or are too consistently over-promotional make your business seem out of touch. Having very few followers implies that you’re not very engaging, or generally unpopular.
Social Media is Important for Customer Service
In the 21st century people, particularly millennials, don’t like calling and wading through a call center to lodge a complaint or get clarification about a product. They’re going to search on Google, and they’re getting on Facebook or Twitter, because it’s an extremely convenient, low-hassle way to get in touch that doesn’t require them to talk to a salesperson.
Often, these are the people who otherwise would have simply resigned themselves to stop buying your product or to cancel your service, and this gives you a unique opportunity to make it right and retain customers that you would have otherwise lost.
Addressing these concerns on social media also helps you protect your online reputation by keeping those individuals from venting their frustrations on third party review sites.
It’s Perfect for Industry Level Marketing
Social media isn’t a place where people generally love to share brand-specific messages, but that shouldn’t scare you. What they do share is interesting ideas and information that make them feel empowered. While it’s often difficult to build specific brand loyalty this way, it’s the perfect way to introduce lay-people who otherwise wouldn’t even know you exist to your mission and your products.
These people don’t tend to convert right away, but it does generate interest in your industry and grows the potential market for your products.
Social Media isn’t there so much to empower you as it’s there to empower your customers. Whether you continue to maintain a non lead-generating social profile is often a matter of cost, but there are plenty of reasons why you should make every effort you can to keep things running.
Don’t have the time to keep those social profile running? We provide full-service social media marketing options right here in Miami!