Social Media Marketing: The Key Tool for Small Businesses

By Andrea Dubon

Why is Social Media Marketing important for Small Businesses?

It is 2018, and Social media marketing has earned a significant space within businesses. From start-ups to large-scale companies have been benefited by the BOOM of this new tool. It has helped them to grow and to bring a substantial amount of profit to any business. Social media advertising may be a new type of advertising, but it is budding faster than expected. For example, Facebook Ads, although the social network launched ads in 2005, it managed to reach 9.16B in ad revenue in the first quarter in 2017. This just proofs social media’s potential as a tool that could help any business to generate revenue by posting on all multi-social media platforms.

Increase Brand Recognition

Michael Manzur, CEO, and founder of Flood Me Social shared his thoughts about social media marketing for this article. “Social media is not an amplifier. It is a magnifier. It is not a megaphone. It is a tool of reciprocity.” What this means is that the created value of social media is determined by how well we understand this tool and the targeted audience. However, it becomes a bit tricky when small companies are still in the crucial, and often iterative, stages of identifying a target audience. We all know that small companies are evolving processes that often take on a life of their own. For a social media strategy to be truly successful, it must have the target audience firmly identified. What Mr. Manzur recommends is to balance the “Why” with the “How.” If we understand why we want our business to become available on social media, then we will adjust and implement our how more efficiently. The how informs. The why transforms. Another important opinion from Mr. Manzur is why small business objectives play an important role in the Social Media marketing of the company. He stated,

“The key here is understanding that social media strategy should always go along with business objectives. "

At the heart of our, Why should be a social media strategy that is focused on addressing the needs of our target audience. I recommend using a customer persona to accomplish this task. Customer personas are a crucial component of the development of a social media strategy"

Improve Brand Loyalty and Customers Insights

On the same hand, Andy Neuman, a digital marketing executive at the Doyle Group, remarks that social media marketing as a road that engaged repeated and new customers to the same company objective. “Small businesses can benefit from social media marketing if they take the time to establish a base of brand advocates. This level of engagement takes time to build, often being less than 5% of the total social reach. However, people in this category are not only repeated customers but bring new customers to the brand.

The best tip I would give to a SBO beginning a social media campaign would be to research which network is most used by their target audience and will yield the highest return on investment (ROI).

Engagement should focus on the way the brand makes customers feel or impacts their lives. Think of Coca-Cola; they don't sell a line of beverages, they sell "happiness" with their ad content focused on the best times of our lives being shared with their product.” Social media also gives to small business the opportunity to gain valuable information about what their target audience is interested in and how they behave, via social listing. For example, a small business can monitor clients’ comments to see what they think of their business directly. Small business can segment their content based on topics and see which type of matter generates the most interest, and then produce more specifically based on feedback. Small business can measure conversions using different posted promotions on various social media channels and eventually find a perfect combination to generate revenue.

Decreased Marketing Costs

According to HubSpot, 84% of marketers found that as little as six hours of effort per week was enough to increased traffic. Six hours is not a significant investment for a channel as large as social media. If a small business can use just one hour a day to build new content and synced with the marketing strategy, small businesses could start seeing the results of their efforts. Even if they use paid advertisement through Facebook and Twitter it is affordable, depending on their goals. Small businesses never have to worry about going over budget if they start small; once they get a better feel for what to expect, they can increase their investment and their conversions rates accordingly. 

Nicolas Ortegon, Social Media Community Mgmt. at Great HealthWorks, states that “Marketing over the years has changed very quickly and mostly due to technology and the ability to obtain information faster. According to Google, people will spend over five years of their lives using Social Media, that is 40 minutes on Facebook, 35 minutes on YouTube and 15 minutes on Instagram on average (depending on personal social media preference). With a social strategy in place and ready for implementation, the brand or small business is set to increase engagement with its audience. Through increased engagement and interaction, it will work to grow market share, especially over its competitors, increase traffic to the website, engagement, and consequently increase revenue. Also, from an economic point of view

“TO BE PRESENT ON SOCIAL MEDIA IS CHEAP.”

Since the internet is open to everyone, a small business can compete with biggest and well-known brands more freely and give them some opportunities to spread your message as a business, to connect with your target audience better with little or no money at all. For a competitors’ aspect, a small business owner can decide where to be present in “social” that is relevant to your business, what their competitors are doing (direct or indirect competitors), and give them ideas from big brands in your industry that can be applied in a small scale.” Therefore, small businesses can build and control their budget if they have the possibility to reduce marketing costs by posting on social media channels.

Richer Customer Experiences

Nowadays, social media is an essential communication channel as much as emails or phone calls. Every customer connection small businesses have on social media is an opportunity to publicly demonstrate their ability to do business, to excel the customer service level and enrich their relationship with their customers. For example, if a customer complains about a product on Twitter, the company can address the concern immediately, apologize publicly, and offer a proper solution to convert the experience into a customer retention tool. Or, if a customer left positive feedback, the company can thank them, provide a discount for future orders and recommend additional products. It is a B2C experience that lets clients know the company cares about what matters to them.

Michael Ruiz, an entrepreneur, can testify how social media has helped him to excel his goals. “Being an entrepreneur has a lot to do with being where your customer is and connecting with them. Everyone these days is on Social Media, and the different platforms allow you to connect and engage directly with your audience.” On the same hand, Michael shared about the affordability of marketing any small business, “Social Media is the most inexpensive way to market your business. It not only allows you to test ideas, to see what works, but it gives you insights that let you hone in on exactly who’s interested in what you offer. Their demographics, their interests, their behaviors, even down to key life events and even exactly what their interested in when it comes to your specific products.” Michael believes that the best way to be successful is to observe competitors’ success, not to cheat on their performance, but to bring new and fresh marketing ideas to the customers. Michael states “Your competition is always looking for ways to beat you to the punch and they’re on social media. You will be at a huge disadvantage if you’re not on as well.” Small business can create a new way to impact their customer in an easier way than large-scale companies, so Michael also added.

“If you’re passionate about your business and truly feel it adds value to people’s lives, then social media is the best place for you to spread your message. It’s a great platform that allows to deliver your content, express your creativity and have fun while you’re adding value to your customers.”

Higher Conversion Rates and Inbound Traffic

Social media marketing outcomes in higher conversion rates in a few distinct ways. Possibly one of the most significant is its B2C relationship; the fact that brands become more customer friendly by interacting with different social media channels. Social media is where brands can act as regular people do, and this is essential because customer like o feel identified and understood by a representative and not a company. Additionally, studies have shown that social media has a 90% higher lead-to-close rate than another type of marketing, and a bigger number of social media followers tends to improve confidence and trustworthiness in the brand. Only by targeting the right audience in social media can improve conversion rates from existing traffic. Without social media, small businesses’ inbound traffic is limited to people that already know the brand and Individuals searching for keywords currently rank for.

Chris Ketchledge, CFO of Tape Jungle, shared the same vision about high conversion rates and inbound traffic. Every social media channel adds another path that leads back to the company’s website, and every piece of content built is another opportunity for a new client. The more quality content any small business collects on social media, the more inbound traffic they will generate, more traffic means more leads that could result in sales. Chris also added, “Small businesses have fewer resources to allocate for marketing than a larger business. To compete and grow in the digital space, small businesses must find less costly ways to get their message to the public than a larger business. Since marketing, via pay per click, is more valuable than social media posting, a strong social media presence can enable a small business to leverage the internet for minimum spend and maximum reach.” Social media marketing also plays a role in customer service, and as such, when building a business from scratch having a presence on social media can encourage potential customers to purchase from you. The reason social media is a trust signal is due in part because new customers can feel a sense of "trust" in so much that if there is an issue with their purchase. This media presence of the business would ensure they had an outlet to express any consumer concerned.

“Social Media Marketing allows a small business to create cost-effective awareness campaigns to reach new users by demonstrating your values and peer feedback/support”

Over 30 percent of entrepreneurs and small businesses were operating independently with one business’s sole employee, and over 35 percent just had between 2 and ten employees. Even though many of these businesses had small employee rosters, they had a considerable impact on U.S. digital marketing. According to the Small Business Administration, small businesses accounted for 63 percent of the net share of new jobs over the past six years. Companies also had a significant impact in keeping other companies afloat. Therefore, small companies have a remarkable job to impact the market and its endeavors. 

These are the advantages of maintaining a long haul online networking effort, yet if a small business has been facing challenges about how to begin, I will recommend focusing on the following aspects: First, the competition has already opened a path. They are as of now a web-based networking media, which implies their social networking potential activity and transformations are being poached. It is a must for all small companies if they want to reduce their competitors’ ability to expand market share while standing inactively. There is significantly even more motivation to begin; the field has been already worked.

Second, the sooner a small company starts with their social marketing, the faster they will see results and enjoy the benefits. Online networking is about relationship building, and it tends to develop exponentially as your current clients provide referrals, and their references do the same, word of mouth advertising. The sooner a small business begins to work on their social media channels, the sooner they will have the capacity to start identifying the target audience.

In conclusion, social media marketing showcases, when done right, can prompt more clients, more activity, and more transformations, and it's digging in for the long haul. Potential losses are insignificant. Practically, small businesses don't have anything to lose by getting engaged with online networking. The measure of time and cash it takes to make their profiles and begin posting is typically negligible, contrasted with other promoting channels, like TV advertising. Only six hours per week or a couple of hundred dollars is all it takes to set up your quality.

~Special thanks to all the collaborators who made this article possible.~ -AD-