Social Media Marketing Companies in 2022

What is social media marketing? Why is it important for your business?

Social media marketing is the new buzzword for companies and businesses today; but what exactly is it? And how do businesses benefit from it? Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms to connect with potential customers, building a strong brand image, generating leads and thus driving business growth. Social media marketing involves everything from creating and publishing content on social media platforms, interacting with followers and running social media advertisements. It is all about connecting and interacting with your audience online in order to turn them into potential customers. The most commonly used platforms for social media marketing today are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and YouTube. With new platforms and features emerging by the day social media marketing as a whole is constantly changing and evolving.

Social media marketing is a valuable strategy that when used and capitalised upon properly can bring a host of advantages to businesses. Let’s take a look at why social media marketing is a valuable tool for businesses,

• Social media is the biggest platform available for brands and businesses to connect with their users: According to statistics, 90.4% of millennials (Age group: 26 – 41) and 77.5% of Generation Z (Age group: 42 -57) use social media actively.
• Influence of social media on consumer behaviour: Research has shown that 71 percent of consumers who have had a positive experience with a brand on social media are very likely to recommend the brand to their family and friends. Also, statistics show that 81 percent of the people who use Instagram use it to research products and services.
• Cost effective tool: There are several tools and mediums available for brands to market and advertise their businesses; however social media is the most cost effective of all the options. Majority of the times setting up and running a social media account for a brand involves negligible to zero costs and even when companies want to run paid ad campaigns the ROI is relatively high.
• Real time feedback: One of the biggest features of social media marketing and something that other mediums of advertising and marketing do not possess is the ability to get real time reactions and feedback. By running a social media advertisement or campaign, companies can gauge their audience’s reaction from the comments and the engagement metrics.

Different types of social media marketing

Social media marketing can be broadly classified into three categories,

• Organic marketing: Organic marketing refers to the campaigns, advertisements or content posted by a brand or business that automatically picks up views and engagement. A well-crafted social post that automatically draws the attention of users and brings in engagement in the form of shares and comments is an example of organic marketing.
• Paid marketing: As evident from the name, paid marketing refers to the content and advertisements that a company pays for in order to increase its reach and attract the attention of social media users. Sponsorships, YouTube ads, collaborations with influencers, PPC campaigns are all examples of paid marketing.
• Earned Marketing: Earned marketing or earned media can be best understood with the help of word-of-mouth marketing. Any engagement that a company or brand generates automatically from its users is called earned media. Customers sharing product reviews, user experiences or positive feedback are all examples of earned marketing.

Social media marketing is more than running a Facebook or Instagram ad campaign or constantly uploading pictures on a brand’s official page. Let’s take a look at the different forms that social media marketing can take,

• Content Marketing: Content marketing focuses on creating relevant and attractive content consistently in order to attract and build an audience base. The ultimate aim is to convert this dedicated audience base into profitable customers. Webinars, blogs, e-books and educational videos are all examples of content marketing.
• Influencer Marketing: This type of marketing relies upon endorsements, product mentions or product placements from social media influencers. A social media influencer is a person with an active follower base with whom he or she actively engages with. And most importantly the influencer has the power or capability to influence the purchasing behaviour of his or her audience.
• Sponsorships: Sponsorships refer to financial or in-kind support by a business or a brand to a particular event, sports team, organisation or charity with the aim of attaining certain business objectives. The advantages that a company or brand aims to gain from a sponsorship are help in creating a strong brand image, positive word-of-mouth, increased publicity and an increase in sales.
• Community Building: Social media community building is the process of building a following of people with a common interest around a particular product, brand or activity. This can be done with the help of active and consistent engagement with the followers. The biggest advantage of community building is that by getting the followers to engage in active conversation brands and companies can get valuable insights and feedback from them regarding their products and services.

These are few of the most common popular forms of social media marketing, however with social media constantly evolving with new platforms, apps and trends this list will keep on expanding with newer forms of social media marketing.

Signs your business needs a professional social media management company

Social media marketing when implemented and carried out right can benefit numerous benefits to a business, however the key is in ensuring that your business has a sound strategy to leverage the benefit that social media can bring to a business. Here are the top signs that your business needs a professional social media management company,

• Lack of a strategy: It is not sufficient to have social media accounts or channels where you constantly post or upload images. To generate engagement and consistently grow your following it is necessary to have a coherent strategy and clear-cut goals and objectives.
• Engagement is minimal: One of the biggest KPIs to track the success of your social media campaign is by the engagement it generates. If the comments, likes or shares on your social media account or the content you share is low, then it indicates that your strategy needs a revamp.
• Growth is stagnant: Considering the fact that reaching out to potential customers is one of the biggest aims of social media marketing, it is important that your followers or audience grow consistently. If your growth has stagnated for an extended period, it may be time to bring in professional help.
• Interaction rates are low: One of the most unique features of social media is that it allows for real time interaction with users and audience online. Social media users often ask queries or post complaints online on the brand’s social media pages. Not responding quickly to such comments or not responding at all creates a bad impression for the business.
• Lack of conversions: The point of social media marketing is to generate leads and increase the revenue for the business. A well-structured and implemented social media strategy will be able to show conversions enabling the business to measure the ROI. However, to achieve this, the social media strategy should involve coordination between the websites, the social media pages and the landing pages.

If your company’s social media marketing strategy is suffering from any of this, it may be time to bring in a professional social media management company to take care of your social media strategy.

Benefits of hiring an expert social media management company

Apart from crafting and executing a well curated social media campaign for your business, an experienced social media marketing agency can bring a whole host of advantages to the table. Some of the benefits of hiring an expert social media management company are,

• Access to experts: By choosing to work with an experienced social media management company, you get to collaborate and work with experienced social media strategists who have prior experience and expertise in creating and executing well rounded social media campaigns.
• Knowledge of the latest trends and technologies: Social media management agencies know the pulse of social media and have knowledge of the latest trends and practices online. Hence, they can help craft the most effective campaigns increasing your growth and your ROI. Most importantly, working with an experienced social media agency reduces the room for trial and error in your strategy.
• Brings in a fresh perspective: One of the biggest advantages of choosing to work with an external social media ad agency is that brings in a fresh and new perspective to the strategy. By choosing to work with an in-house social media management team, the company will most likely miss out on this perspective. This is especially important if the company is aiming to rebrand itself or looking to overhaul its social media strategy.

What does a social media marketing agency do?

A social media agency will work with you to understand the essence of your business, identify who your target audience are, identify which social media platforms and channels best suit your business and create a strategy that helps increase your reach and generate leads. A professional social media marketing agency will take care of everything from constantly creating and sharing content, monitoring and engaging with your followers and reporting the results with predetermined metrics so that you can determine the effectiveness of the campaign.

How to find the right social media marketing firm for your brand?

Finding the right social media marketing firm that perfectly suits your business is the first and the crucial step in ensuring your social media marketing strategy turns out successful. So how do we go about finding the social media agency that best suits your needs and requirements?

• Establishing your needs: The first step is knowing what your needs from the social media agency are i.e., what services you expect from them. It is also important to have a clear-cut idea of what your end goals and aims of the project are, what is your budget and what are your KPIs to assess the efficiency of the campaign.
• Finding the right agency: This is perhaps the most tricky and challenging part. This step involves doing due research and analysis regarding the hundreds of social media agencies online and narrowing it down to the ones that suits your business the best. Web directory sites like Selected Firms can help you with this step.
• Asking the right questions: To find the right social media agency from amongst the ones that you have shortlisted, it is necessary to sit down with them and have a one-on-one interaction. It is necessary to ask questions on whether they worked on similar projects before, what parameters they use to measure the success of the project? etc.  

By following these steps you can find and hire the right social media marketing agency that can capture the essence of your business and create an effective social media strategy.