Some of your conservatively thinking colleagues may think or even confront you directly – why social media? Why spending time and money on them? Why even hire you (provided you’re social media manager)?

And there is a solid answer to that! Because promoting on social media in many cases is simply cheaper than using other online ads, specifically – the search ads or display ads. Surprised? Let me explain.

For that, let me remind you how typical search ad works? A person types something in Google (or other search engine) about  something he is searching for now. Let’s suppose this person is looking for a men’s suit, custom made. So he is typing something like ‘custom men’s suit’. If you sell this suits, and set up the campaign for such words, your ad will be seen saying something like ‘Looking for custom made men’s suit? Buy one from our site’ (I’m simplifying). Similar ads will be seen from your competition.

The person may click your ad and visit your site. Would he buy instantly – most likely – no! Unless you’re a brand like Toyota, Timberland or Apple this person NEVER HEARD OF YOU. How often do you buy from people/companies you never heard of? How many stuff did you buy from some brand or person you never heard of before this month? Zero! You go to the same barber, same nail artist, same shoe shop etc.

So in the most favorable scenario this person will just memorize you, that you sell suits, and probably will bookmark your site. But with absolute certainty I’m telling you this person will continue the search, see competition’s sites, look for review on the web, etc. He will have huge amount of hesitations – is your suit really so good? What if there will be error in measurements? How do you deliver, etc etc etc. And may be someday the person will come back to your site and order.

The reality is that 1% instant conversion from visits to purchase is a good thing. 99% of your visitors don’t buy. And if you do search ads, you pay for each visitor something between $0,2 and $2 (depending on the industry, and may be even higher).

What may help this person buy from you? Remembering the previous example of how seldom you buy from someone you don’t know – probably building trust is the solution? And this is exactly where social media might help! Imagine that instead of telling this person to buy your suit, you’re letting him know how choose a proper style for the suit. And then – what is the difference between Italian and English and American style. And what does ‘100s wool’ mean. And how to pack the suit for travel so that it wouldn’t require ironing past your flight. And many other things about suits. Does it all seem to produce an image of a company who knows a lot  about suits and most likely will do the good one?

Putting a ‘like’ to a page that supplies you with interesting information, or ‘following’ it is very trivial thing to do. Much easier than talking this person into submitting for email newsletter. And much easier than bookmarking your site.

But when the person likes/follows your page, it means he will read your new posts in his social network (not all of course, as the organic reach is being slashed by the networks, but still). And you pay for this only once. Not for buying likes of course. But paying for the ad which promotes your page. Our experience with different industries show that you may get a new follower for your page through advertising your page within $0,5 – $2 brackets.

So instead of buying the visitors via search ads for almost same amount of money you’re getting a follower (a social equivalent of subscriber) for nearly same amount of money. And this is the exact reason why social media is better than search ads. You may ‘talk’ to this person through your post almost eternally (instead of receiving his/her single visit to your site)!

Then this person reads your posts, some of them at least, and starts to think of you as of ‘company which knows what are they doing’. And reading these posts will often involve visiting your site as well to read the article. And when the person is reading the article on your site, there is a lot of other thing you can involve him into – like showing a banner or your recent sale or offering to subscribe to email newsletter or many other things, and someday hopefully convert into buyer.