Marketing is one of the most vital pillars of building a successful business. That’s not a very controversial statement. My favorite quote about marketing comes from Dale Carnegie. He said, “personally, I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms.” What a strange and unorthodox way to describe such a simple concept. The most important task a business looking to survive and thrive has is making sure that people know the business exists. Sounds grossly obvious, but the marketing done by most companies today forces me to point out that simple nugget. 

Most people feel like they are experts at marketing. They know exactly how to reach their target customer or audience and they do the same thing over and over again. The reality is, most people are not experts at marketing, in fact, almost no one is an “expert” at marketing (Not even myself who does it for a living). Trends and culture change fast, and so should your approach to making your business known.

Social media has been around for about a decade, it’s not necessarily new. Everyone knows about it; 2 billion people use it. Still, most people have no idea how or if they should invest in marketing their business on it. Well, I am going to provide 3 reasons why social media marketing is not only something you should consider but the most logical form of marketing you can invest in.

Reason 1: Social Media Marketing is Trackable

For decades, businesses have accepted the fact that you have to invest in marketing. They had no idea how much to invest or what their return would be, but they invested. Pouring money into a billboard advertisement or flyers gave you no tangible value. Sure, there is value in having your face blown up 10 feet for oncoming highway traffic to see, but do you really think people are reading the billboard while going 75 miles per hour thinking “I should call that guy, I do need a divorce attorney.” Hopefully, the answer is yes for your case. Personally, I am not interested in “hoping” my marketing spend will work.

Maybe you’re sophisticated, and you invest in digital marketing. Congrats! It is pretty cool to see your logo on a TV screen. The only problem is that in order for someone else to see your logo, they have to be watching TV commercials. That might be tough when 57% of Americans have Netflix and have zero chance to watch your 15-second commercial. Think about the last time you watched TV.

Maybe you invest in SEO or SEM. Google Adwords is a much more logical and more modern investment than print media, but how effective is it? Studies show that you are lucky if the average user stays on your website for longer than 15 seconds (The average time spent on a website is less than 6 seconds). Don’t believe me? You can read more about it here. Maybe your business is able to sell your customer within 6 seconds, but most businesses cannot even state their slogan at that time. 

This brings me to social media marketing. The moment you’ve probably been waiting for. Now, social media marketing is not perfect, but you can track where every single penny goes. In fact, you can do a ton of damage without even spending a cent! Social media marketing has evened the playing field. This is where merit, skills, and some proper strategy really helps. 

Different than every other form of marketing, you can count every dollar that you put into it, and every dollar that you get out of it. These platforms have the capability to follow the user through your advertisement or website and track what they bought, how many, and whether they have stored some other items in their cart for later. You can imagine how easy this must be to determine whether this is a good investment. 

Reason 2: You Can Run Multiple Advertisements

Without having to go through each form of marketing, let’s just compare a TV commercial to a Facebook Ad. With a TV commercial, you produce one video (that probably wasn’t cheap), you select the station/channel you want it to be on, and that’s it. You might have an idea of some rough demographics of who’s watching it, but the details are impossible to depict. Also, these commercial spots (especially the good ones) aren’t very cheap. On average, you pay $50 for every 10,000 viewers on a local station, you spend $115,000 for 30 seconds for national coverage, or you could pay 5.25 million for a Super Bowl ad. All of that money with the hope that the right person is sitting on the couch when the commercials air.

The distinct advantage that social media has is the ability to run multiple ads to multiple audiences. For example, if I want to sell my new action figure, I have to cater to 2 audiences. I have to convince the kid that he or she absolutely needs to get this action figure so that they can destroy their Lego world with it and think it’s the most rad toy ever. I also have to convince mom or dad that they must purchase the action figure for little Johnny because most 8-year olds aren’t earning income (unless they are a YouTube star). This predicament is super normal, and there is no better way to solve it then running TWO Facebook Ads. One created for the little Johnny, and one created for mom. You can run as many ads as you want. You can run each ad for $5 and target exactly who you want. I’ll get to the ridiculous targeting capabilities in the next part, but just imagine putting half of your commercial budget into social media. 

Reason 3: The Targeting Capabilities are Unmatched

Okay, this one is a bit controversial, but it’s the truth. Do you know why the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, is in court all the time? It’s not because he has a ton of followers and politicians are jealous. It’s because Facebook has a TON of data. Take whatever you think they know and multiply it by 10. Facebook knows where you live, how much money your neighbour is making, your favorite kind of coffee, the kind of food you buy your dog, and your favorite sport’s team. 

I am not going to discuss whether that is right or wrong, I am going to let you decide. What I will discuss is how you can use this data to target exactly who you want on every advertisement. If your target audience is single moms in their 30’s who love Dalmatians and Cracker Barrel, you can target exactly them. If your target audience is preteen dancers who love slime, Justin Bieber and live in LA, you can target exactly them. Even if your audience is rich old couples in their 70’s who love Jeopardy and scotch, you can target exactly them.

Do you understand how insane of an opportunity that presents?

Written By: Kevin Fedor