What is the Risk of Not Using Social Media for Business?

Can your business survive without social media?

1. In today’s growing competitive environment, it is difficult to run a business without social media.
2. Can you think of any brand that does not have any social media presence?
3. It is said that the use of social media can be a great technique for marketing, and is commonly termed as social media marketing.
4. A planned and well-designed social media strategy helps any business to grow and become a leading brand in the existing marketplace.
5. It helps in the promotion of the products and services your company offers.
6. Social media marketing is the most essential tool to flourish your business and brand.
7. This article will elaborate on how social media can increase the sales and revenue for your business, along with focusing on the various types of risks associated with saying no to social media.

Benefits of Social Media for Business

1. Social media marketing means using various social media platforms, such as Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., to promote your start-up or an existing business.
2. Before we understand the possible risks of not using social media, let us be acquainted with the benefits of social media.
3. The advantages are as follows-

Inexpensive Marketing

• The use of social media for marketing can be economical compared to other marketing tools used for advertising and promoting business.

Brand Awareness

• Making people aware of your brand is important for any new or existing business.
• You must create a long-lasting effect on the minds of the customers.

Connecting With Customers

• It is possible to communicate with different customers across the world easily.
• Thus, one can easily expand the customer base.

Increased Traffic

• If you have your presence across different platforms, it becomes easy to attract customers from all over the globe.

New Leads

• Once you are successful in attracting new customers for your business, you can generate new leads and retain your customers.

Business Reputation

• It becomes effortless to create a good brand image for your business or start-up when you have your presence on social media.
• Your customers can see what you are doing and the different activities you undertake.

An Effective Way Of Communication

• Social media can be used to communicate important things.
• Imagine instead of personally emailing each customer you can post any important circular on social media and save a lot of time and effort.

Customer Engagement

• If you create good and interesting content you can ensure more customer engagement.

Knowing Your Customers Well

• You need to listen to what people have to talk about you and your brand.
• You can also personalise the communication you have with your customers.
• You can then design the products and services accordingly.

Analytics

• There are many tools available for managing and analysing customer data concerning social media.
• Data analytics helps in taking several decisions for your business.

Risk of Not Using Social Media for Your Business?

1. We have seen that the benefits of using social media is not limited to boosting sales and increased revenue.
2. There are various risks associated with any business that does not use social media for promotion.
3. Let us be mindful of the risks as follows.

Low Customer Reach

• Competition has increased, and customers are now not limited to specific places.
• People residing in all countries may be potential customers for your business organization.
• If you do not promote your business using social media or use social media for business-related purposes, it becomes difficult to generate leads.
• Along with that, the inability of accessing an adequate number of customers results in the closure of your business or start-ups.

Lack Of Brand Awareness

• The majority of the population spends more time on social media as compared to anything else.
• If you don’t have an online presence across all the social media platforms, then people may not know about your brand and what you offer.
• Even if they come across your brand name, they will be unable to recall what products and services you offer them.
• You cannot expand your customer base if people do not know your brand or have not heard about the same.

Missing Out On Key Information

• People have started using social media activities to express their views and opinions.
• It is easy to understand the needs and wants of people using social media by analysing the recent trends and fashion.
• Using analytics, one can make use of real-time data and make important decisions.
• You can also make necessary changes in the products according to the preference of the customers.

Your Customers May Forget You

• You may adapt to using other tools for advertising and strategise accordingly.
• But, let’s assume if you use the radio for promoting your brand, how many people do listen to the radio?
• The ratio in comparison to the people who use social media is low.
• So, you need to focus on customer interaction as well.
• Understand the importance of building relationships.

Limited Growth Opportunities

• When any business is not using social media, they grow slowly.
• Their brand and business are known by the local customers only, and retaining them may become challenging at times.
• It is difficult to communicate with your customers, listen to them, and the company does not develop at the required pace.

Low Customer Interaction

• Not being on social media leads to low customer interaction.
• You have to be responsive and listen to all the queries.
• Two-way communication facilitates customer satisfaction when their complaints are resolved quickly.

Industry Changes

• The world is continuously changing.
• If you do not know what is going on, then you will fail to gain popularity.
• You may not be able to build a fanbase as you would not know the recent trends and changes.

Monitoring Competition Becomes Challenging

• It is important to keep an eye on the competitors.
• If you can do so, you may launch new products and services which can compete with that of the competitors.
• You will not be able to know their new strategy, campaigns, etc.
• It is important to know what customers feel about their business.
• Without social media, we cannot track them.

Customers Don’t Trust You Easily

• How can a customer trust when he is not aware of what you are doing and what your business is all about?
• What are the main areas of focus or the values of the business that may be burdensome to exhibit?
• Low brand awareness leads to a lack of trust and decreasing turnover for your business.

High Advertising Costs

• It may be possible that once you know your target market, you may resort to any advertising tool apart from social media.
• The probability remains that you may end up spending crores of rupees on advertising and still be unsuccessful.
• The inability to gain traffic and lack of data for research may lead to business failure.

In Conclusion

1. Thus, we can say that social media is the need of today’s business world.
2. Once you know your target market well, you can then select the right marketing strategy.
3. Social media helps in cultivating your brand image and communicating with your customers effectively.
4. Think of brand recognition and social media may emerge as the most constructive tool and course of action.

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FAQs

Q- What is customer engagement?

1. Customer engagement means the ongoing interactions between the customers and the company.
2. The more the engagement is, the high is the possibility of retaining your customers for a longer period.

Q- What are the risks associated with using social media?

Ans- The various risks associated with the use of social media are-

1. Data Security
2. Losing Reputation Easily
3. Financial Disclosure
4. Competitors’ Risk
5. The Occurrence Of Scams
6. Lack Of Policies For Social Media
7. Network Issues, Etc.

Q- Is Social Media always necessary for any business?

• Once you have carried out adequate research and know your target market, you can then decide the marketing technique to be used.
• So, depending on the nature of the business or the start-up, you have to decide whether social media is necessary or not.

Q- What are the different ways of promoting products without using social media?

Ans- The different ways of promoting products without using social media are TV, radio, advertisements in newspapers, billboards, pamphlets, flyers, etc.

Q- Do you need a license for social media marketing in India?

• No, you do not need a license for undertaking social media marketing.
• But if you want to establish or commence a digital marketing agency in India, you have to register the business as a sole proprietorship and follow the necessary procedures.