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Social Media Marketing Advantages and Disadvantages

Social Media Marketing

Social media has undoubtedly become one of the most popular marketing tools in the last ten years. It’s advantageous because it’s typically free of charge, convenient, and user-friendly. However, using social media to market your business has certain disadvantages as well. For the most successful business strategy, keep in mind that social media marketing has advantages and disadvantages.

Celebrities have indeed launched their products and careers using social media. With a decent following and generating enough buzz, it’s feasible for a business owner to develop a hefty revenue. Furthermore, social media marketing gives newbies a fair shot at publicizing their products to a broad range of consumers, thereby creating an even playing field. However, a few drawbacks of using social media come along with developing your marketing strategy.

Overall, digital marketing is an excellent way for customers to connect with businesses to form relationships. It’s a great way for a company to generate leads and convince customers to buy its products. Marketing is an essential activity that businesses should always keep in mind when proposing their business plan. To help you further understand social media marketing, SEO Design Chicago is here to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using social media marketing for your business.

Social Media Marketing in a Nutshell

Social media marketing uses any social media platform such as Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram to promote products or services. The world as we know it is in a very digitally-inclined age. Millions of people are clicking, swiping, or scrolling through several mediums of mass digital communication. It is one of the most common ways people use their time.

Businesses have become more aware of this uptick in the use of digital media. As a result, they have taken mass marketing through digital content by storm. Social media is a practical way for businesses to leverage the popularity of specific platforms. A solid marketing approach requires being in the right location at the most opportune moment. What better way to be in the best space and time in the digital world than with social media?

Advantages of Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing has space for all who are seeking to put their business out into mainstream society. Here are some advantages of using social media.

Cost-Efficient

Running a business already comes with a significant amount of overhead expenses. One of them is certainly advertising. Big corporations have substantial budgets in place to pay for advertising. However, small business owners face the task of securing affordable advertising. In scenarios like these, it’s always wise for small business owners to consider all the available options and, of course, the pros and cons of social media marketing. Using a digital platform for marketing can be very cost-effective for small businesses. This is especially true for companies with strict marketing budgets that need to create buzz about their products and services.

Traditional forms of marketing can cost small businesses a fortune. However, digital media certainly plays a role in increasing the amount of income a business needs when they are first getting started. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter offer free accounts that can bring your business to the next level at no cost to you.

Easy to Measure

Instagram and Twitter allow companies to obtain a considerable following. If a business account is lucky enough to generate at least one-third of profits from their social media followers, this can dramatically increase their revenue. It only takes seconds for a post to go viral or generate millions of likes, views, and hits. A business has a pretty concrete way to measure how much marketing exposure they receive by tracking the number of followers. Furthermore, it doesn’t cost anything for a business to track their feed and compute the follower-to-sales ratio.

Innovative new software updates have enabled businesses to measure their traction through intelligent software that tracks the data usage of any followers who search for the company online. For instance, when you Google your favorite pair of shoes for additional sizes and colors, you might find yourself coming across several ads about those same shoes on your Facebook page.

Easily Adjustable Ad Campaigns

With social media, you can easily adjust ad campaigns. One effective tactic is to use A/B testing. In marketing, A/B testing involves running versions of ads that are different in only one aspect. By quickly adjusting ad campaigns in the context of an A/B test, you can gain several insights about your ads. You can learn what types of imagery, post texts, headlines, calls to action (CTA), and other aspects of your campaigns work better for your audience on social media.

Disadvantages of Social Media Marketing

Let’s take a look at some of the disadvantages of using social media to market your business.

Ad Campaign Issues

At times, businesses can find themselves in a situation where the ad they have chosen to run is offensive, and they must remove it immediately. A business needs to remove offensive or unsuccessful ads as quickly and efficiently as possible to avoid a digital marketing failure.

Screenshots of ads can be a very detrimental disadvantage of using digital media as a marketing tool. An issue with digital media is that once the ad has reached the smartphones of millions of people, anyone can screenshot the ad and repost it. In that case, businesses are inadvertently releasing control of their advertising to their consumers. Some companies even find themselves being “canceled” by the cancel culture community.

Being canceled is the equivalent of when networks would pull certain ads off cable TV and radio stations anytime there was a discrepancy. Nowadays, all it takes is for a few individuals to share a single belief about an online ad’s offensive or inappropriate nature to get a company entirely canceled. This drawback of cancel culture can significantly impact the overall reputation of a company. Furthermore, the revenue and popularity that companies previously generated online can dramatically fall if several thousand followers begin to “unfollow” or “unsubscribe” from the company’s social media pages.

Branding Obstacles

Businesses can take advantage of the digital world to enhance their brand. However, branding inconsistencies throughout social media platforms may confuse customers. Companies can build their brand with various posts that give their audience the latest intel regarding what they can expect next from the company. Platforms like Instagram have made it possible for businesses and entrepreneurs to archive former brand campaigns when they issue a new branding style for their digital media.

A branding style ensures business that there aren’t any branding inconsistencies. Branding inconsistencies can discourage consumers and confuse them. For instance, if a big-name store like Target decided to change their famous red and white logo to a blue and white logo, customers would feel pretty disoriented when they click on the social media pages to find these sudden changes.

Cybersecurity 

Another drawback of using social media to market your business is cybersecurity issues. You risk cybersecurity concerns when surrendering your information to create a social media marketing platform for your clients. If your primary means of social media marketing are via the internet, you could be putting your website or social media platform at risk of being attacked by hackers. Furthermore, data breaches of social media platforms can create a rift in the trust relationship between you and your consumers.

More Pros and Cons of Social Media Marketing

With the ever-changing fast pace digital media world, consumers’ attention spans are becoming shorter and shorter. These shortened attention spans have made it very challenging for businesses to grow their marketing. Fortunately, digital media’s practical and user-friendly nature allows companies to keep their customers engaged in new, innovative ways.

For instance, the most recent trend has been engaging with customers via Tik Tok. The fans of businesses seem to enjoy keeping up with the latest trends. “Tik Tok challenges” have become a fun and exciting way for companies to engage with their consumers through creative content sharing. The more people that join the “challenges,” the better businesses will hold the attention and engagement of their consumers.

However, increasing engagement can be very challenging for companies to maintain via social media at times. For instance, a new wave or trend can rapidly sweep in and steal the thunder of previously trending products or services. In this case, digital engagement can act as a drawback from time to time.

If you’re looking for professional social media marketing to enhance your business’s online presence, SEO Design Chicago can help. We offer various digital advertising services, including YouTube advertising, LinkedIn advertising, Facebook advertising, Instagram advertising, Snapchat advertising, Twitter advertising, and more!