With over 2 billion users worldwide, social media is a critical marketing tool for any company looking to make it big in business. You can be sure that a good proportion of your business’ target market is on social media, and taking advantage of this segment can bring a significant difference to your company’s portfolio.

Businesses in Kenya are equally not being left behind. Majority of the Kenyan companies have engaged social media marketing companies in an effort to leverage the advantages offered by social media platforms. Implementing a social media marketing campaign may, however, by challenging if you don’t know where to begin.  It might mean seeking out the services of a social media marketing company for help because the only thing worse than lacking a marketing strategy is implementing a wrong one.  An online marketing agency will present you with various social media marketing strategies and let you pick one that works best for you. Below are the top 5 ways business uses social media marketing to attract more customers.

1. Generating Leads.

Approximately 65% of small and medium-sized businesses use social media to generate and increase leads.  The greatest advantage offered by social media is the ability to grow highly qualified leads by adopting advanced targeting techniques. Generating quality leads can be achieved by tailoring campaigns to platform-specific marketing. Each of the major social media platforms, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. have their own unique characteristics that appeal to various market segments. A prudent business manager is one who finds ways of utilising these features for maximum impact. 

2. Enhancing Search Engine Ranking.

Search engine optimization (SEO) can be greatly enhanced by an accompanying effective social media marketing. 93% of all online experience begins from search engines, while 75% of internet users don’t go beyond the first results page. The search engine ranking of your domain name and website increases exponentially with arise in the social media share rate. In most cases, consumers will view your social media profile before visiting your site so as to get a clearer picture of what your brand is all about before making a commitment to purchase. This, in essence, means that the ranking of your social media page will be enhanced, improving the chance that it will appear amongst the top-ranked pages.

3. Drive Traffic and Customer Engagement.

A strong social media presence usually results in high organically generated website traffic. Businesses who lack this have to rely on a limited number of customers who follow them on social media. The most effective approach for driving traffic and customer engagement is creating a business profile on each of the relevant social media platforms then regularly posting relevant content customized to each platform. This will increase engagement, thereby driving more traffic.

4. Building Rapport with Customers.

Social media was primarily developed to help people connect and share, basically socializing: its’ not just a marketing platform. Businesses are realizing this and using such platforms to build rapport with their target audience, a process that leads to loyal customers. Building trust and confidence with clients is normally achieved by the business posting unique, authentic, relatable and engaging content for their clients.

5. Competetive Analysis.

As strange as it sounds, social media is the best way of keeping watch over what your competitors are doing. There’s no better way to monitor them and analyze their performance. Social media platforms also offer opportunities for you to learn from your competitors. Many businesses are able to see what content their competitors are posting and how they engage with clients. They are thus able to learn their strategies and tweak them to work for them.