Have you ever used social media platforms to promote your brand? You must have, right? Social media marketing remains an important method for companies to engage with audiences in the year 2024. With advanced social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, it becomes easy for a company to reach millions of people. These platforms are often used for promoting brands when you try hiring a digital marketing agency to benefit 2024. However, there are some advantages and disadvantages to such an approach. In this article, let us look at ten major strengths and weaknesses experienced by businesses, incorporating recent trends and statistics into the discussion.
Social media sites have billions of users globally; hence, they are a befitting platform for brand marketing. Facebook can have over 2.8 billion. Global coverage means that businesses can take their products to potential customers all over the world to create more awareness and cover more markets.
Social media marketing strategies 2024 is considered cheaper compared to other marketing approaches that an organization may use. While building individual accounts, creating pages, and sharing posts are free, paid advertising on social networks is also more affordable than other types of promotion, providing higher RIOs.
Social media enables organizations to communicate with customers directly. A survey by consultants has revealed that companies that communicate with their customers over social media enjoy an improved customer loyalty of 25%. This engagement can also help create better bonds with the viewers or readers. When you try outsourcing to a digital marketing agency, social media platforms are your go-to method for retaining clients.
On Facebook and Instagram, we have several features of market segmentation. Companies can develop ads that target particular age groups, hobbies, and consumption patterns, guaranteeing that the ads get to the right people. Some examples of ad targeting options include over 1,500 different targeting options available on Facebook.
The data obtained through social media analytics 2024 is important to know more about the audience’s behavior and preferences. Products, including Applitools, utilized by NASDAQ and LEGO, among others, identify and assess user interfaces for marketing purposes to aid firms in improving their communication, besides designing content that will appeal to their audiences.
Linking can be an effective tool in social media where a business shares content or a link to its site in order to increase traffic. According to the research, companies that engage in social media marketing report an average of 77% rise in traffic to their sites.
The content that social media supports is text, image, video, live stream, and other forms. This versatility enables organizations to experiment with different formats. For example, video content on social media generates 1,200% more shares than text and images combined.
Maintaining a good posting schedule, creating valuable content, and interacting with customers are factors that determine brand dominance. Interactions with friends/family also help in building trust among potential customers via word-of-mouth. The survey also revealed that more than 70% of consumers who a particular brand offered a good social media service are likely to recommend the same.
Companies that are more aggressive and more strategic in using social media as a marketing tool can benefit from that over competitors that are not, or are less so, in social media. Research shows that firms that are effective in their social media marketing techniques 2024, have a 23% chance of outcompeting their rivals.
Social media activity can enhance search engine optimization (SEO). When content is shared widely and receives engagement, it can improve a website’s ranking on search engines. Google considers social signals as part of its ranking algorithm.
Social media accounts need to be managed properly, and that means one has to spare some time for them. Content creation, engaging with customers, and reviewing results can be a very daunting process. Across the companies and industries, 5-6 hours are spent in a week solely to manage social media accounts.
Social media is a public place where any negative comment or bad review can easily be viewed by the public. Compared to positive feedback, negative comments are often sensitive and difficult to manage and may be very detrimental to a brand image. It also revealed that, out of the customers who complained on social media, 85% of them expected to get a reply within a day.
This means that specific social media metrics in 2024 and patterns evolve over time. Keeping track of such changes and ensuring that businesses modify their strategies to reflect these changes can indeed be challenging. For instance, they noticed that Facebook’s algorithm changes in early 2021 reduced the organic reach rates for business pages.
Most businesses are using social media platforms to market their products, and this makes the competition high. It is, therefore, crucial and quite strategic for a company to embark on something quite unique, something out of the norm. Over 90 million small businesses alone are registered and actively using Facebook.
Many social media platforms have been accused of collecting large amounts of information about users, thus violating their users’ privacy. Because of these reasons, businesses must be more careful when using this type of data to ensure that they do not fall afoul of the law or customer expectations. It forecasts that in 2024, 73% of executives see remote employees as a higher security threat, which shows the importance of secure data handling. This is one of the major drawbacks of social media marketing in 2024.
The problem with relying on social media is that the audience may be lost if the platform changes its terms or if the platform itself is being changed. For example, the algorithm in Instagram may reduce or increase the number of reach and engagement.
People who are active on social media in 2024 require short and concise information. Keeping and getting their attention needs content that will have an impact and be easily comprehended by the eye. In other words, on average, users spend only 1. 7 seconds on a piece of content shared on a Facebook page.
Misinformation is another concern linked to Social media. Businesses need to be especially careful about tracking their presence and responding to anything wrong about it. Misinformation about COVID-19 flooded the social platforms in 2021.
Although social media is a valuable source of market information, defining the tangible return on investment (ROI) in social media marketing is not easy. A total of 63% of marketers claim to find it difficult to track the ROI of their social media activities.
Excessive engagement due to the addictive characteristic of social media results in organizations engaging in social media at the expense of other strategic activities. They can, therefore, distort organizational productivity and strategic direction.
Navigating the complexities of social media marketing can be full of challenges. This is where Markonik, a software and digital marketing agency, stands to benefit from the new trend. Markonik is an expert in business social media marketing, which involves the use of social media in business promotion. Now, with its help, it is possible to create effective targeted campaigns, engage content, and gain comprehensive analytics from Markonik to maximize the benefits of social media for your business while minimizing the risks.
Therefore, social media marketing will be beneficial in the following ways in 2024: reaching a larger audience, cost saving, audience interaction, and customer understanding. However, like any other Facebook application, it has its own disadvantages, such as being time-consuming, getting negative feedback at times, and privacy issues. Facing these challenges, businesses need professional assistance from an agency like Markonik to manage their social media marketing.
