It won’t be an exaggeration to state that social media has taken over the world. From relationships to businesses, the virtual communication system is now the most fertile ground for cultivation, assuring maximum fruition of efforts. There was a time when the word advertisement would strike images of either page long brand promotions in newspapers or short ad films on TV or radio. While these methods of promotions are still around, their thunder has been stolen by the popular social media networks. With over 1.5 billion active users on Facebook, 400 million on Instagram and 320 million on twitter (as of a study conducted in 2015) social network is the key to unlock the floodgates of brand visibility and brand growth.
How brands are utilizing the power of social media to build their business
For any retail brand, marketing is the most important and crucial step in order to jump start the business or to maintain the sales or to grow further. Marketing not only brings visibility to your brand but builds brand loyalty and helps in getting leads. And in today’s time, if any retail brand wants to make it big in the market, they have to exploit the opportunities that social media marketing can potentially bring to them. Facebook, Instagram and twitter- popular brands are targeting every platform to build a broader customer base.
From the other side of the perspective, customers get to know about the brands, about the deals they offer and their product and service quality, all through social networking platforms. The chance of gaining a new client for a brand now highly depends on the reviews of it available online. Hence both the ways of buying and selling has become highly influenced by social networking. But brands are not limiting their usage of social networking to only selling, instead, they also rely heavily upon it to improve their products. The numerous ways in which retail brands are making use of these interactive platforms to boost their products, primarily include:
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Better the quality of product : Social media platforms like Facebook and twitter are becoming the most preferred medium of customers to express their grievances or satisfaction with a particular product of a particular brand. In some cases, apart from their overall experience with a brand, customers also suggest alterations that they believe could make a product more suitable for their use. When a brand is open to these reviews and suggestions, they have a huge chance of improving their customer satisfaction rate, by respecting their opinions and addressing their grievances or acknowledging their demands and if be the need, by changing some aspects of the product to serve better to the needs of the largest chunk of clients.
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Ads on social media : The largest of social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram offer brands, regardless whether small or gigantic, to run ads on their platform. These ads can be full-fledged videos, or stills and can include a link to lead the users directly to a brand’s website. One gets the chance to curate their ads and the cost is also offered in varying ranges from which a weekly or monthly or yearly package can be chosen. The ads also come with powerful targeting options so that your ad reaches the right set of audience. For example, on Facebook the ads can be targeted based on demographics, location, interest or behavior. Also, the reach and the performance of these ads can be measured in real-time data.
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Interaction with customers : Only running ads however is not sufficient. If a brand is looking for attain optimum usage of social networking, it has to take advantage of the interactive nature of the platforms. Ads do showcase the products but with social media one can track what happens when the product leaves the inventory reaches the customer. The brands that are able to seize this opportunity have a lot better chance at building better customer relationships. Over 67% of customers now visit social media pages for customer services and some brands do provide 24/7 services through their social media accounts and pages.
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Keep up with competitors : Through social media monitoring brands can keep an eye on the moves of their competitors. This kind of Intel allows them to prepare strategies that help them to stay ahead of the competition.
Some of the most popular brands in the world, like Starbucks, Levis and Samsung have built their business stronger through more than one social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and even Snapchat. This didn’t only help these brands promote their own products but also Java Development team better relationships with their customer base. Through the strategic use of social networking, these brand names have converted their products into lifestyle statements that has drawn in more and more customers that are not only choosing but are actually aiming to buy their products among the other competitors.
