As a small business owner, you’re constantly on the lookout for new ways to get your company’s value proposition in front of the right audience. One of the most effective ways of achieving this goal is through social media marketing.
Why?
Because it’s a great way to engage with your potential customers and/or existing clients.
This can all be done very cost effectively too! The likes of Facebook or Instagram make it very easy for small brands to develop a “face” for the business and make it simple to express your marketing messages, build relationships and present special offers that will attract business.
This may come as a surprise to you, but small businesses have an advantage over larger companies. “How so?” you ask…
Social media comes down to engagement! If a business doesn’t engage with its customers, chances are it won’t have success in social media marketing.
Small Businesses Using Social Media
Having the ability to interact with consumers on social media is an important marketing strategy for your business. Using this type of medium helps you to build brand awareness, increase your lead and customer base, and continue developing existing customer relationships.
A study revealed that a massive 90% of marketers said that social media was important to their business. 82% of the survey participants worked in businesses with less than 100 employees.
So why is it that small businesses have an advantage on social media?
Here are some reasons why small businesses can actually have more success on social media than big companies:
1. Personalized Attention
The great thing about small businesses is that they are all about personalization. For some consumers, shopping with small businesses is all part of the great buying experience. One survey carried out found that 53% of consumers like to shop at small businesses because of the personalized service they receive.
2. Small Businesses Are Community Based
One of the great things about small businesses is that they tend to be community focused. This means they choose to be heavily involved in their communities, which leads to a lasting connection with customers.
When using social media, these businesses can easily connect with their customers online. Small businesses are more likely to respond to their customers than large businesses. As a small business, you can easily handle the influx of comments from customers, so make sure you reply quickly.
Social media offers a fantastic way for people to talk about your products or services. They can very simply like, comment and share your offers and give you valuable feedback. A great way to increase customer engagement, is to ask your existing customers to post pictures on social media with the company’s product. Offer incentives like discounts or buy one get one free offers to entice them into taking action. Offering a giveaway or contest is also a great way to get people engaged. Be sure to welcome reviews, questions, comments, and concerns from consumers.
As a small business owner, you can easily foster connections with individuals on social media. Current and potential customers will have more respect and appreciation for a business who provides timely responses. Simply put… it shows you care about your current and potential customers. That goes a long way in terms of enhancing trust and reliability, which are very important factors consumers take into account.
3. Free Advertising! Well Almost…
Social media offers a low barrier to entry. Its free to setup a profile page for your business, post up images and video of related content for your business and invite your target market to like or follow the page. You’ve got a channel online that you can use to present your offers and engage with your audience. All of this for free!
Well… almost free. Facebook is very much a “pay to play” platform now. Other social media platforms are more or less the same. However you can still reach your audience pretty cheaply. Advertising for local businesses won’t cost you an arm and a leg like more traditional methods such as billboards, TV or radio advertisements can do.
You can target those advertisements to reach people within a certain radius of your business. That means you don’t end up paying for advertising outside of your local customer base.
If you are looking to start advertising on Facebook, set a budget and choose your audience. Instead of coughing up thousands of dollars on social media marketing to reach across the nation like a large business would, small businesses only have to focus on their locality. This means its a lot cheaper to reach your audience as its local.. Not national. You can dominate the market in your region very cost effectively.
4. Partner Up with Local Businesses
Another beneficial thing that small businesses can do using the power of social media is to collaborate with other businesses in the local area to run promotions together. Why not partner up with other businesses (not competitors) that share the same audience within your niche and locality?
Let me give you an example…
You can post on your Facebook to make your fans aware of a 15% discount code they can use for another local business. The other local business can do the same to their audience. This way you are helping each other out by tapping into new audiences and incentivizing them to become a customer.
All this takes is a little outreach via phone, email etc to other businesses and sooner or later you partner up with other like minded businesses to cross promote each other. Another great idea is to team up with multiple businesses to form a mega giveaway promotion. Each business offers one of their products and services as part of a mega prize.
You can have a single winner or multiple winners that win these prizes from the businesses you partner up with. My advice would be to have multiple winners involved as it gives more people a chance to win. This in turn attracts more people to your giveaway. So it’s really a win-win situation. The giveaway will create a lot of buzz and if done correctly, you’ll attract a lot of attention online.
A tip I always offer my clients when they wish to run a giveaway, is to always have a runner up prize for all entrants. This could be in the form of a discount code you offer or a buy one get one free promotion to all entrants. My clients usually have great success when doing this as it attracts new customers and reignites old ones.
