27 Amazing Benefits Of Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing can do a lot for your brand. 

(And that’s a pretty big understatement.) 

Whether you need to nurture a loyal customer base, attract high-value prospects, or build your credibility as a business, the world of social media marketing has a solution for you. 

But why is social media more effective than traditional media in certain areas? What makes it so useful for ambitious businesses looking to drive growth and scale up performance? 

Well, there are a huge number of benefits associated with social media marketing. 

So we thought we’d list a few of them out for you. 

27 of them, to be precise. 

It’s time to run through the key benefits of advertising on social media, and explain how these different channels, platforms, and tactics can help to grow your business. 

Why social media marketing is important for your business 

1. You can build brand awareness

Many social media platforms offer marketers mind-blowing reach. Facebook, for example, boasts around 2.96bn monthly active users, meaning you can target and connect with a huge number of potential customers. 

This presents you with a golden opportunity to build brand awareness and raise the profile of your business across a colossal digital audience.

Building brand awareness is vital for a number of reasons. 

For one thing, it introduces your brand to new prospects, which helps them to progress through the sales funnel and primes them for future conversions. It also keeps your business and products top-of-mind when users are planning to make a purchase, which can have a big impact on your long-term revenue. 

You can also extend the reach of your marketing and boost brand awareness further by advertising across multiple platforms. The more reach and frequency you achieve across different social media channels, the larger your audience of potential customers becomes. 

2. You can uncover valuable audience insights

The scale of social media audiences isn’t just great for building brand awareness, either.

It also means that you can gather valuable insights about your target audience, which can help you to improve campaign performance and optimise your content strategies. 

For example, you can use social media analytics to understand which posts and messages are resonating with your audience. You might identify a certain CTA or product benefit that drives high levels of engagement or spot weaker messages that aren’t delivering results. 

You can also use social media data to uncover detailed information about your audience, such as their demographic profile and interests. 

This might confirm your existing beliefs about your most valuable customers, but it can often highlight new audiences that you hadn’t previously considered targeting. Everything from comments to clicks and conversions offers useful insights about your audience, which is why social media marketing can be so informative for marketers. 

3. You can target super granular audience segments

Many social media platforms collect a staggering amount of data about their users – and marketers can leverage this information to build granular target audiences. 

Although the data sets available on different social networks vary, many of these platforms allow you to build audience segments based on:

• Demographic information
• Interests and passions 
• Browsing and behavioural data 
• Content engagements 
• Keywords and searches 

This data is extremely powerful and enables advertisers to build audiences that are often highly engaged and super profitable. Reaching the right users is key to achieving cost efficiency and increasing conversions, which is why social media marketing is so popular. 

You can also set up audience A/B tests quickly and easily on many social media platforms, which allows you to rapidly gather insights that can fuel optimisations and future campaign strategies. Test, learn, implement, and repeat. 

4. You can develop an engaging content strategy 

While many brands associate social media marketing with paid advertising, organic content strategies can also deliver outstanding results. 

A well-planned and data-driven organic marketing strategy can help you to nurture a community of engaged followers, establish your brand’s credibility, and generate long-term business from loyal customers. 

There are many different types of organic content that you can publish on social platforms, including:

• Video posts
• Image posts
• Text posts
• Infographics
• White papers 

High-quality posts can generate consistent engagement among your followers, and if any of this content is shared by your audience, you can quickly rack up incremental reach. 

You can also use performance insights to refine your organic strategy across different platforms. There may be a particularly high-performing piece of content that you can adapt and re-distribute across multiple networks to maximise reach! 

5. You can skyrocket your website traffic

Social media marketing can also be exceptionally effective at increasing clicks and high-value website traffic. 

By launching data-led targeting tactics and engaging organic social media posts, you can reach a sizable audience of warm prospects who are likely to click and convert. 

Paid ad formats can be particularly useful when you’re looking to drive traffic, as many of these placements are specifically designed to deliver clicks. Carousel and Collection ads, for example, are highly engaging for social media users, and you can rapidly boost your web traffic with the right creative assets and CTA.

Quality website traffic can also be converted into hard sales through tactics like retargeting, which is a hugely important part of paid social media marketing. 

If you’re struggling to maximise the efficiency of your paid advertising, partnering with a specialist social media marketing agency can help you to deliver optimal results and rapidly scale up your campaigns. 

6. You can deliver cost effective conversions 

Whenever you launch a new marketing campaign, you’re generally looking to achieve one thing – conversions.

Conversions can come in many forms (i.e. sales, downloads, subscriptions) but they ultimately represent an action that’s important to your business objectives and revenue. 

Fortunately, social media marketing can help you to deliver cost-efficient conversions at scale. 

Precision audience targeting can help you to identify highly profitable audiences across multiple platforms, and you can deploy a range of different ad formats to help you drive clicks and conversions. Plus, many social media networks offer automated optimisation tools, which makes improving performance and decreasing acquisition costs a breeze. 

You can also adjust your bidding strategies on the fly throughout most social marketing campaigns, which means you can focus on your most effective tactics to maximise conversions and reduce wasted spend. 

7. You can strengthen your brand identity 

Building a recognisable and credible brand presence is key to successful digital marketing, and social media platforms can enable you to establish a crystal clear brand voice. 

If you’re actively advertising across multiple platforms, maintaining a consistent tone of voice helps users to quickly familiarise themselves with your brand – it also helps you to differentiate yourself from your competitors. 

You can reinforce your brand personality through new posts and paid ads. The more you’re interacting with your target audience and uploading content, the clearer your brand identity will become. 

Strengthening your brand personality is also crucial if you want to increase trust among prospects. Consumers will need to trust your brand before they commit to a purchase, so it’s very important to focus on developing an authentic and trustworthy social media presence. 

8. You can generate profitable leads 

Many brands utilise paid social media marketing for lead generation, and the results can be hugely impressive.

MINI France, for example, managed to lower its Cost Per Lead by 39% thanks to Facebook ads. Microsoft used LinkedIn ads to achieve a CPL 60% below industry benchmarks and secure high-quality leads. 

So why is social media so effective at generating fresh leads?

Well, many social networks offer specific ‘lead gen’ ads that make the sign-up process infinitely more streamlined and less painful for prospects. 

Rather than needing to visit an external website and click through multiple boxes, users can input their information directly into the lead gen ad form. Personal details can also be instantly pulled from social media profiles, which saves even more time and incentivises users to complete the sign-up process. 

Removing the usual lead-gen hurdles can make a massive difference to your conversion rates, so if you’re looking to secure red-hot leads, look no further than social marketing. 

9. You can monitor brand sentiment 

Ever wish you could eavesdrop on your target audience and understand what they really think about your business, products, and ad campaigns? 

With social media marketing, you can.

(Kind of.)

Social listening tools allow you to track user sentiment towards your brand across various social media platforms. 

This is achieved by monitoring comments, posts, and relevant hashtags that include your business or products. You can understand how users are responding to certain campaigns, analyse conversations including your brand, and get a feel for how the social media world perceives your offering. 

Although it can be tempting to focus exclusively on click and conversion metrics, monitoring how your audience feels towards your brand can help you to improve customer relationships and enhance your brand reputation. 

10. You can harness the power of social proof

Social proof is like gold dust for digital marketers. 

Incorporating social proof (e.g. reviews and testimonials) into your marketing is a great way to rapidly build credibility and authority with your audience. 

Since social proof sourced from real humans feels inherently more authentic and trustworthy, it can be hugely persuasive for potential customers. If a prospect notices that you have hundreds of five-star reviews, for example, then they’re more likely to believe in the quality of your products.

And luckily, social media is full of opportunities to harvest and distribute social proof. 

For example, you can use social media marketing to collect valuable User Generated Content from your customers. You might set up a competition or giveaway to incentivise video testimonials and use this content in both your organic and paid strategies to build trust and drive conversions. 

11. You can monitor competitor activity (and learn from it) 

It’s more than likely that your competitors are also active on social media platforms, looking to steal your market share and capture your precious customers. 

Not ideal, eh? 

But there’s good news. 

Through social media tools, you can monitor competitor activity to analyse their campaigns, identify their target audiences, and spot major opportunities for your own business. 

Competitor analysis is a great way to understand who your closest rivals are, and where the key battlegrounds are for your brand on social media. For instance, you might realise that shared audiences are being oversaturated with the same messages from multiple brands and adapt your campaigns accordingly. 

There are plenty of competitor analysis tools available online, but there are also some free resources (i.e. the Facebook Ad Library) that you can use to snoop around for competitive insights. 

Be diligent with your competitor analysis, identify what seems to be working (and what isn’t), and use these insights to optimise performance!

12. You can apply learnings to other marketing channels 

There are plenty of valuable insights that you can gather from social media marketing. 

By running organic and paid strategies, you can begin to identify your most profitable audiences, establish your best-performing messages, and understand where your brand is positioned in the market. 

However, these insights aren’t just limited to social media activity.

Certain learnings can also be applied to other paid marketing channels (e.g. paid search, display, email) to improve performance. For example, an effective audience segment that you’ve discovered on TikTok may also open up new targeting opportunities on Google. 

Don’t be afraid to apply social media learnings to different platforms. There will always be differences between marketing channels, but gathering performance data is pointless unless you’re putting these insights into action. 

13. You can tell a compelling brand story 

Social media is a fantastic environment for brand storytelling.

You can use social platforms to share your core principles and business values with a wider audience, which is hugely important when you’re trying to attract new followers and differentiate yourself from the competition. 

Everything from long-form video content to text posts can be used to tell engaging stories and strengthen your brand identity. 

You might produce a video that highlights how your business began or shine a spotlight on your employees through organic posts. Not every brand needs a higher purpose, but it’s still vital to establish a personality that resonates with your audience. 

14. You can gather inspiration for future campaigns 

The world of social media moves at lightning speed, and sometimes the sheer volume of new content being shared can feel overwhelming. 

However, if you can keep your eye on the latest trends and consumer behaviours, you can spot new opportunities for your brand to shine. 

Inspiration is everywhere on social media – it could be a viral hashtag challenge, a format that’s insanely popular with your target audience, or even a new product or service launch that’s drumming up a lot of interest.

Use this inspiration to fuel your future ad campaigns and social strategies. This could be as simple as jumping on a new TikTok trend or developing a brand-new product to keep up with consumer demand. 

Keep your finger on the social media pulse, and you might just discover a few ways to elevate your brand and open up new revenue opportunities. 

15. You can access in-depth performance analytics 

Social media platforms offer rich performance data that can be invaluable when you’re trying to increase conversions, optimise ads, and reduce campaign costs. 

Brands can easily access several key performance metrics through built-in analytics tools and dashboards, including:

• Reach/Impressions 
• Clicks
• CTR
• CPC
• Views
• VTR
• Engagements
• Conversions
• CPA 

All of this data is extremely useful for campaign optimisations, as you can immediately shift your budget towards the best-performing audiences and tactics. 

The majority of social networks also allow you to build and download custom reports, meaning you can easily focus on the most important data points for your business objectives. 

16. You can establish yourself as an industry leader 

Social media provides your brand with a strong platform to connect with global audiences and establish your brand voice. 

This is hugely useful when you’re looking to solidify yourself as an industry leader and engage in social networking. 

You can use social networks to share opinions and insights that instantly reach an enormous audience, helping you to build a positive reputation and establish yourself as an authority. 

Many brands, for instance, use social media platforms to distribute white papers, share video content, and network with industry colleagues. 

Credibility is key to earning the trust of your target audience, so if you have high-quality content to share, make sure that you’re maximising the reach of your social channels. 

17. You can utilise super-effective retargeting tactics 

The majority of social media networks allow you to implement a pixel on your website. This little piece of code helps you to bridge the gap between your marketing activity and website actions, and also enables you to launch retargeting tactics. 

And if you’re looking to drive cost-efficient conversions, social media retargeting strategies can be a game-changer for your business. 

For example, a pixel can highlight users who have clicked on your Instagram ad, visited your website, but then ultimately abandoned their cart. 

You can use this pixel data to build warm retargeting audiences who are close to conversion. By retargeting these hot prospects, you can rapidly improve your conversion rates, reduce your acquisition costs, and secure sales that may previously have been lost forever. 

(Many social platforms also allow you to build ‘Lookalike’ audiences based on these retargeting segments, meaning you can increase your reach without sacrificing quality.) 

18. You can provide responsive customer service 

For brands looking to provide superior customer service, social media is a no-brainer. 

By utilising social media channels to respond to customer queries and issues, you can deliver a more responsive service that enhances your business reputation and nurtures brand loyalty. 

There are many different ways that you can leverage social media for customer service, including: 

• Replying directly to in-app messages
• Responding to negative comments or questions
• Proactively sharing product tips and solutions 
• Setting up automated chatbot replies
• Posting FAQs to resolve common problems 

The level of customer service you provide can be a dealbreaker for potential customers, so be sure to take full advantage of the speed and efficiency that social media offers. 

19. You can cultivate and maintain customer loyalty 

Social media marketing presents brands with a great opportunity to nurture customer loyalty and generate long-term business. 

Since social media enables you to communicate directly with your customer base, you can make shoppers feel recognised and appreciated by your business – and this can go a long way when you’re trying to keep customers loyal. 

For example, you might send a happy birthday wish to your most loyal customers, or set up giveaways that reward recent shoppers with prizes. 

Creating a convenient customer experience is also a great way to drive customer loyalty. This could involve setting up a chatbot for social media messaging or including shoppable products in your posts. 

20. You can share business updates with a huge audience 

You can leverage social media channels to instantly share key business updates with your customer base. 

Actively communicating with your audience is incredibly important and can have a significant impact on your customer relationships. Whether it’s crisis management or product promotions, social media can be a valuable tool for brands that need to communicate with their audience at scale. 

Want to inform your audience about an upcoming flash sale? No problem.

Need to flag some potential delays with customer deliveries? Sure thing. 

There are also plenty of ways that you can open up these social media communication channels. Polls and live videos are good for driving interaction and receiving real time feedback, while you can use text posts and videos for more formal announcements. 

 21. You can run highly effective influencer marketing 

Influencer marketing can deliver tremendous results for digital advertisers, and social media is a goldmine for talented brand ambassadors. 

A whopping 61% of consumers trust product recommendations given by influencers, which speaks to the power of influencer marketing. By partnering with credible and relevant influencers, you can instantly tap into new customer audiences and unlock revenue opportunities. 

Plus, many social media platforms make it extremely simple for brands to connect with potential influencers. TikTok, for example, has built the Creator Marketplace which allows businesses to quickly discover and recruit brand ambassadors. 

Just remember, you should only partner with influencers who align with your brand values and can promote your products in an authentic way. 

There’s no need to chase global creators who are out of your budget – micro-influencers with access to relevant audiences can drive outstanding results for your business. 

22. You can identify emerging consumer and market trends 

Keep a close eye on social media trends and online conversations to identify business opportunities that your brand can capitalise on.

For example, competitor analysis may highlight a gap in the market that your business can fill. There might be a specific product that your audience is searching for or a common issue that customers are facing. 

Viral trends are also constantly emerging from various social media networks, and if your business is one of the first in your industry to jump on the bandwagon, you can generate sky-high levels of engagement. 

The quicker you’re able to respond to these social media trends and opportunities, the quicker you’ll be able to leave your competitors in the dust. 

23. You can engage your customers directly 

This may sound like an obvious benefit of social media marketing, but that doesn’t mean it should be overlooked. 

The ability to engage and communicate with your customers directly is massively useful, so make sure that you’re taking full advantage here. 

We’ve already covered the potential for social media to revolutionise your customer service, but these platforms can also be utilised in a number of other ways. 

For instance, you can use social channels to reach out to your customer base to gather opinions about your products and services. This kind of direct feedback can help you to make informed business decisions and major improvements to your offering. 

You can also use proactive social media engagement to nudge prospects towards a conversion. If a user is asking questions about your brand in a comments section, you can respond directly with the right information – or even product recommendations and links. 

24. You can improve your search engine rankings

While social media marketing doesn’t have a direct impact on your SEO, it can still help you to achieve a higher search ranking in the long term. 

How, you ask? 

Firstly, we’ve already established that social media marketing is a great way to drive consistent inbound traffic. And if you’re sharing high-quality materials (i.e. blogs, articles, videos) through social channels, that means more clicks, views, and shares on your content.

This is all great stuff for your SEO, as it signals that your website is relevant and worthy of a higher search engine ranking. 

Social marketing also offers wider benefits for your SEO, such as increasing brand recognition and online visibility. All of this adds up over time, meaning users may be more likely to click on your website and share your content in the long run. 

25. You can tackle multiple areas of the sales funnel 

One of the biggest benefits of social media marketing for digital advertisers is the ability to effectively address different areas of the sales funnel.

With a smart social marketing strategy, you can push active users through the sales funnel and successfully convert fresh prospects into new customers.

At the brand awareness level, you can reach an enormous prospect audience through social platforms and increase familiarity with your business. Once you’ve reached these individuals you can boost consideration with informative videos and product-led content, before finally generating conversions with data-fuelled targeting and optimisations. 

All of this can be tied together with intelligent remarketing tactics, which enable you to retarget users based on specific actions. This is a surefire way to reach warm prospects and ensure that your campaign messaging is tailored to your target market. 

26. You can take advantage of several social platforms 

Every social media site is different, offering you access to unique audiences and marketing tools that can help you to achieve your objectives. 

By utilising several social networks, you can immediately extend the reach of your campaigns, increasing brand awareness and helping you to convert new customers. 

The key is to tailor your communications to each platform.

TikTok users, for example, are generally younger and more interested in snappy, short-form content. LinkedIn users, on the other hand, can be highly responsive to longer-form text posts and videos that are packed with industry insights. 

The more you’re able to adapt your creative assets to different platforms, the better your performance will be. 

While there’s no need to stretch yourself across too many social media sites, if you can find a way to effectively manage campaigns across multiple networks, the results will speak for themselves. 

27. You can launch a wide range of different ad formats 

Each social media platform has its own unique range of paid advertising formats, which opens up a world of opportunities for digital advertisers. 

These formats can help you to achieve many business objectives, from driving brand awareness to increasing engagement and generating online sales. 

Basic formats (e.g. video and text ads) are available on every major social network, and these placements can help you to achieve reach quickly and efficiently. 

However, if you’re interested in more creative executions, many platforms offer their own bespoke formats that can make a bold statement. Snapchat AR Lens ads, for example, can drive a jaw-dropping amount of engagement from your audience. 

There are also many social ad formats that are designed to drive cost-efficient conversions, such as Collection and Shopping ads that enable users to click and convert without leaving the app. 

Getting started with social media marketing

Every social media platform has its own unique campaign setup process, but some fundamentals apply to every website. 

If you’re looking to launch an organic social media marketing strategy, it’s a good idea to set up a detailed content calendar that will help you to plan your posting schedule. 

Try to diversify your content and formats to keep things interesting for your followers. 

For paid social campaigns, you’ll need to think carefully about your target audience, campaign budget, and bidding objectives before you set any ads live. Preparation is key, so make sure you’re familiar with the social platform that you’re planning to use!

Once you have these essentials in place, you can follow the specific setup instructions for each platform and launch your marketing campaigns. 

Handy resources for marketing on social media

Just getting started with your social media advertising journey?

We’ve got you covered.

Social media marketing offers a mind-blowing number of benefits to your brand, from helping you with growing brand awareness to bolstering your reputation as an industry leader. 

Always make sure that you’re balancing organic and paid strategies to deliver optimal results, and don’t hesitate to experiment with different social networks. 

Best of luck!