Social media has emerged as a vital component of today’s customer journey, highlighting the relevance of social media marketing for companies of varying scales.
Despite financial pressures on marketing expenditures, decision-makers are still emphasizing social media investments—and rightly so. With consumers dedicating increasing amounts of time to social media, this channel provides unmatched opportunities for brands to impact purchasing choices at all phases, from discovery to advocacy.
Currently, your social media marketing strategy is crucial to your brand’s success. The subsequent data from The 2025 Sprout Social Index™ highlights the role of brands within the sphere of online culture and how these consumer inclinations will propel business growth in 2025 and beyond.
The significance of social media for businesses across various sectors
Astute brands across different sectors utilize social media to impress their audiences, expand their market presence, and enhance sales. The following figures illustrate the influence of social media on businesses of all varieties.
1. Social media marketing fosters brand community and reputation
Reputation is paramount, especially in tough economic times. As per The 2025 Sprout Social Index, 93% of consumers believe it’s essential for brands to stay current with online culture. However, this doesn’t necessitate jumping on every viral trend. Instead, consumers expect brands to grasp which trends speak to their specific interests—a crucial factor in cultivating an engaged community.
The role of social media in reputation management has never been more critical. As users spend greater time online, these platforms are vital for shaping your brand’s story. While many consumers describe themselves as “chronically online,” 30% intend to increase their social media use in 2025, and 56% plan to maintain their current levels.
Social media facilitates brands engaging with their audience on a more personal level, forging authentic and enduring connections that can endure through both prosperous and tough times.
2. Social media data enhances competitive positioning
Gaining an advantage over competitors today can lead to more informed business choices in the future. Nonetheless, if you’re not leveraging social media to monitor what your competitors and their customers are focusing on, you’re potentially missing opportunities.
The live aspect of social media presents a unique chance to examine and evaluate competitor strategies. If you’re unfamiliar with it, here’s how the role of social media marketing in competitive intelligence typically appears:
- Aggregated data regarding customer care interactions highlights the strengths and weaknesses of competitor offerings.
- Content themes reveal insights into the distinctive value propositions competitors promote, along with opportunities to set your brand apart further.
- Share of voice data indicates the share of the market your brand occupies online in comparison to competitors.
Of course, conducting this analysis manually can be labor-intensive even for the most equipped teams. Fortunately, Sprout’s AI-enhanced social listening tool allows teams to discover essential insights efficiently via automated, presentation-ready competitive analysis reports.
3. Social media data fosters a more customer-focused business strategy
Social listening analytics empower brands to stay aligned with the trends and discussions that affect their audience as they unfold. These insights facilitate stronger, more customer-centric business strategies.
To observe this in practice, consider Goally—a tech company committed to enhancing the lives of families with neurodiverse individuals. They utilize Sprout’s listening tools to keep pace with their audience’s changing requirements.
With Sprout, the Goally team identified a shared desire among parents raising neurodiverse children: They aspire to see their children achieve independence. This insight has reinforced and refined their corporate vision, influencing everything from content to customer support.
4. Social media marketing enhances public relations outcomes
The 24-hour news cycle has redefined traditional public relations methods. Nowadays, merely pitching a release to journalists is insufficient. You need to craft a compelling brand story that proactively garners media attention; otherwise, your message may get lost.
Social media helps brands distinguish themselves by providing numerous engaging ways to portray a consistent stream of thought leadership and brand narratives. The platform increasingly contributes to executive communications strategies, offering business leaders fresh opportunities to share insights and demonstrate their expertise.
Cultivating your brand’s social presence, including that of your CEO and executives, gives you more than just followers and likes—it equips you with a proprietary channel for amplifying PR, empowering you to shape narratives, directly interact with your audience, and foster positive media coverage.
5. Social media marketing is crucial for crisis management
Crises are no longer exclusive to large corporations. Social media exposes both minor and major businesses to heightened scrutiny.
Social media crises can happen on numerous scales, whether it’s an unfortunate employee comment magnified by an angry audience or a spike in consumer complaints following a service error. The most efficient way to manage these challenges is to have a social media crisis plan.
The role of social media marketing in crisis management is two-pronged. First, by monitoring social media channels, you can preventively manage risks. Second, embracing a social-first approach to crisis management allows brands to tackle issues before they escalate into larger situations.
6. Social commerce connects customers with your products and services
Why concentrate on social media marketing? Because it represents an investment in the future success of your business.
According to the Index, many consumer-brand engagements begin well before a purchase. Numerous consumers begin researching items on social media up to six months prior to buying. Each interaction with your audience on social media can influence their journey to a sale.
If you’re not investing in a data-informed social commerce strategy, you’re overlooking a significant revenue opportunity. Treat your social channels as an interactive, community-focused catalog for your products and services.
7. Social media marketing creates impressive customer experiences
A greater number of consumer-brand interactions are moving online, presenting a significant opportunity for businesses seeking to make a lasting impression with their target markets. One-on-one engagements are now occurring openly, amplifying their effects.
Hence, it is vital for brands to establish social media customer service strategies that facilitate both proactive and reactive community involvement. Even a simple response to a customer query can have a significant impact: 73% of social media users indicate that if a brand fails to respond, they will turn to a competitor.
Swift, tailored responses are crucial to succeeding on social media. Survey participants in the 2025 Sprout Social Index state that companies should prioritize personalized customer service in their social media efforts. Directly engaging with consumers on social media offers countless opportunities to surprise and delight your audience. Exceeding their expectations results in increased loyalty.
8. Social media marketing generates leads and boosts revenue
Social media platforms have advanced beyond merely fostering conversations—they shape culture. Consumers are utilizing Facebook (39%), TikTok (36%), and Instagram (29%) to make purchases. When broken down by age, TikTok leads the pack: 54% of Gen Z and 47% of Millennials report having bought something via TikTok. Approximately one-third of all consumers expect to make more purchases through social networks in 2025, with this figure nearing half among Gen Z audiences.
Although only 13% of consumers purchasing via social media do so directly on the platforms themselves, this figure is likely to rise. The integration of shopping features has made it easier for consumers to make impulse purchases. If pricing is attractive and the purchasing process is seamless, consumers are willing to spend. Ensure that your checkout mechanisms are easy to navigate and aim to produce content that prominently showcases your products. Sixty-three percent of consumers assert that a brand’s product or service stands out on social media, making it worthwhile to ensure you’re making a remarkable impression in your posts.
How three brands leverage the importance of social media marketing with Sprout
The data is compelling; now let’s observe its application. Here’s how three brands are harnessing social media’s potential with assistance from Sprout.
How Sprout’s social team demonstrates social ROI to our leadership
Securing leadership endorsement is essential for successful social media initiatives. Whether implementing new tools or launching innovative campaigns, having leadership’s backing guarantees that projects stay aligned, secure necessary resources, and navigate challenges smoothly.
At Sprout, when we sought to adopt a multi-touch attribution reporting model to enhance the value of our social media efforts for our lead pipeline, we initially sought the endorsement of our CMO and VP of Brand and Social. Having these executives advocate for us was instrumental in prioritizing this new approach. The push for multi-touch attribution was motivated by objectives related to refining reporting systems to more clearly showcase the benefits derived from our social media networks.
“Social teams are driving revenue,” remarks Olivia Jepson, Sprout’s Senior Social Media Strategist. “However, last-touch attribution merely provides part of the picture. Strategic dialogues about how social influences the entire sales funnel—from initial engagement metrics to downstream demand—are crucial for establishing a more effective reporting framework.”
With guidance from the leadership, we revamped our KPIs to concentrate on aspects such as earned media value (EMV), cost per action (CPA), leads generated, and cost per lead (CPL) to develop a more nuanced understanding of brand visibility and pathways to revenue. These metrics are drawn from Google Analytics, Salesforce, Employee Advocacy, and our tool, Sprout Social.
Utilizing Sprout’s My Reports premium feature, we evaluate cross-platform performance, campaign success, and the levels of engagement with specific audience segments and product focus areas. Thanks to meticulous UTM tagging within Sprout, aligned with our Salesforce integration, we can connect social media initiatives directly to revenue—underscoring social’s pivotal role as a revenue contributor.
Atlassian utilizes social listening to gain deeper audience insights
The Atlassian social team aims to engage wherever discussions about work are happening—whether they mention the brand or not.
“We participate in conversations surrounding teamwork, work management, or agile development—not strictly our products,” states Loren Siegel, Atlassian’s Senior Team Lead for Community and Social Engagement.
Engaging in broader industry discussions that relate to their offerings allows Atlassian to humanize its brand, fostering stronger connections with their target market. Siegel and her team employ Sprout’s social media listening tool to pinpoint and respond to conversations that guide individuals along their purchasing journey.
For instance, one of their social listening queries tracks specific game developers on X (previously known as Twitter).
“Our goal is to understand their dialogue and offer solutions when they discuss Jira, Confluence, and [other Atlassian] products to strengthen brand relationships. This has been an exciting new direction for my team, focusing on community-building with a specific professional group,” she explains.
This proactive social interaction cultivates community around the brand, nurturing loyalty and enhancing customer experiences throughout the buying process.
Casey’s employs social media integrations to enhance customer satisfaction
For Casey’s, creating standout social customer service experiences is a collaborative initiative. To ensure that no customer inquiries go unanswered, they leverage Sprout’s Salesforce integration.
“The integration has transformed our processes,” claims Jasmine Riedemann, Casey’s Social Media Manager. “It has generated a surge of communication within the platform between our social and Guest Relations Teams.”
Before utilizing Sprout, it took Casey’s team as long as three days to reply to social customer service inquiries. The fragmented team structure made it challenging to track which issues were being addressed and when, leading to extended wait times for customers.
Now, Casey’s patrons typically receive responses to their inquiries within three to five hours, on average, as noted by Riedemann. This marks a 90% improvement in response times.
“I can’t emphasize enough how beneficial the Sprout Social and Salesforce integration has been for our teams,” states Riedemann. “The cooperation between our Guest Relations Team and social team has improved dramatically as we can now see who handled each case and what actions were taken.”
The significance of social media marketing influences all aspects of a business
The effects of social media extend far beyond marketing, impacting nearly every aspect of a business. Various teams, from customer support to product development, gain from the rich market intelligence that this channel offers. Marketing leaders must strive to create a consistent flow of social data and insights throughout their organizations to enhance these collaborations.
To facilitate this process, you will require a social media management platform designed to dismantle internal barriers effectively. Request a personalized demo of Sprout Social today to discover how our platform fosters more cooperative workflows that empower businesses to make better, faster decisions through social insights.
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