Social marketing is a unique way of promoting your business which allows you to create an awareness of your product or service over the internet using blogs, social networking sites and other social media. There are a number of distinct advantages to using social marketing including the opportunity it offers to build a relationship with your customers.

Customer interaction

Social marketing is not overt marketing. If you are too intrusive and users start to experience you as ‘pushing’ a product they are very likely to shut you out. The aim is to set yourself up as an authority in your field and to establish a relationship with potential customers through encouraging open dialogue with them. By building a trust relationship with customers and engaging them in online conversation you can get reliable feedback which will enable you to improve your product or service and give you an insight into the specific audience you are targeting. This is most easily done through blogging or highly popular social sites such as uTube or MySpace where users are willing and able to comment freely on your articles.

Increased brand visibility

The more people hear the name of your product or service, the better chance there is that they will remember it. However, since the way in which users experience your brand will directly influence the effectiveness of your marketing campaign, you want them to associate the name with a positive experience. You can ensure this is the case by producing amusing videos or articles, offering useful content or even setting up competitions based on your product. If you use the correct techniques social marketing can go a long way towards establishing a new brand or strengthening existing brand awareness.

Create links

Bloggers and webmasters are always looking for interesting content for their sites. If you can provide them with articles which are worth repeating they will start referencing them at their sites. In this way you can build hundreds or even thousands of inbound links to your site with each article. In fact, a popular article can be read by tens of thousands of bloggers looking for a story to comment on.

Increased sales

Since the main goal for most marketing campaigns is an increase in sales this is an important consideration when looking at social marketing. Although interactions via social media seldom result in direct sales, a positive relationship with potential customers and a growing brand awareness together with the increasing links to your website will indirectly but effectively generate more sales.

Cost effective

Since social marketing costs nothing at all other than your time even one extra sale is a good return on your investment. If you’re working on a low budget, using social media is the most cost effective way to market your product or service.

Finally, probably one of the greatest benefits of social marketing is the fact that it is basically D.I.Y. No outsourcing is required. Anyone who can use a computer and access internet can take advantage of the many social networking sites to promote their product or service.