4 Smart Social Media Strategies for Small Businesses with Big Goals
The hard truth for small businesses is their dependency on social media to bridge their products and services to the endless pockets of the Internet. While this assertion may be met by raised eyebrows, it’s true. A solid and well strategised social media marketing plan, which is part of marketing communications using a complete, 360 Approach, is critical to the growth of starting and small businesses.
In a study conducted by the Social Media Examiner, more than 5,000 marketers were surveyed according to their social media habits and how effective they were in achieving their businesses’ targets. According to the information gathered, 86% depend on Facebook and 18% on Twitter to get their brands across to their target audience. It was also determined that 62% plan to increase their Facebook and YouTube campaigns and achieve greater marketing milestones.
It's going to be interesting to watch what these each of these key players can come up with in offering unique and competitive techniques that will try to outperform the other.
Here are four smart social media strategies you can use for your small business:
- Approach social media marketing differently as a B2B or B2C business.
- Be more certain of your Facebook marketing performance.
- Set quantifiable goals for both organic and paid social media activities.
- Keep up with the latest social media marketing tools.
1. Approach social media marketing differently as a B2B or B2C business.
It was found that B2B businesses prefer LinkedIn over other platforms but still maintain thriving marketing campaigns in other popular channels. Indeed, leveraging a carefully balanced combination of communication channels, as opposed to dedicating all of one’s resources on a single platform alone, lies at the core of true 360 communications. B2Bs are more concerned about looking for resources, facilities and partners—specifically, skilled professionals and other industry leaders to establish working relationships with. Using LinkedIn eliminates the need to comb through the rather wide selection of users and directly target those that meet their criteria.
Of the total respondents, 71% want to have a major shift in their marketing campaigns. Those who belong to the 75% who invest in Facebook ads want to increase their LinkedIn advertising at the same intensity from the previous 18%.
On the other hand, if you own B2C company, you'll want to focus on Facebook and Twitter because of the highly attractive, maximum exposure to a dense consumer base . While having too many people on one platform might mean that your efforts could get stuck in human traffic somewhere, Facebook is constantly updating its services in order to ensure that the ideal customer profiles are reached by marketing efforts.
2. Be more certain of your Facebook marketing performance.
Let’s refocus the spotlight on Facebook and the many businesses that are unloading all their efforts and resources onto this platform in order to maximise its many opportunities. Where marketers were once unable to quantify whether their campaigns in the largest social network were effective or enough, both Facebook and Google Analytics have since evolved enough to help you figure out just how well your campaigns are working.
Facebook itself offers a wide array of tools and metrics for assessing campaign performance. It also shows its users how to monitor the results of their ads, as well as the kind of insights business owners can gain from analysing them. You can even set up custom event tracking which lets you keep tabs on people going to specific pages on your website from Facebook.
Once you're able to measure your campaign performance, you can start working on improving it, even by as much as 167%.
Google Analytics has also developed different attribution models which figure out exactly where your leads and conversions are coming from, which includes your ads on social media.
3. Set quantifiable goals for both organic and paid social media activities.
Because of the amount of advertising dollars they invest, it makes sense for marketers to keep a close on eye on their social marketing numbers. This doesn't mean, however, that you shouldn't keep track of your organic, or free social media posts and other activities. You can also set quantifiable goals for these efforts because of the way organic and paid can work together to affect your bottom line.
A business, for instance, that builds up an audience by posting engaging content regularly and interacts with followers and commenters on a regular basis is far more likely to have its ads warmly received by this same audience.
You can find tips for setting goals as well as the metrics you need to be looking at for both organic and paid social media, here.
The difference between two enterprises where one is achieving its goals while the other one isn’t, is the method by which they measure and appropriate a certain degree of effort to an expected and projected return.
A complete, 360 Approach to marketing communications includes Analytics and Social Media listening tools, to help measure the effectiveness of social media marketing.
4. Keep up with the latest social media marketing tools.
To a certain extent, people can still market their products without having to pay in order to “boost” a post, but that would equate to spending more time digging through every organised group and tribe on social media. Whereas you can pay Facebook to apply the same or greater effectiveness in giving you the results you’re aiming for.
Facebook is constantly coming up with new ways for businesses to get their messages across like the Instant Experience, which you might want to explore and integrate into your campaigns.
Remember, however, that Facebook is far from the only social media platform you can use for paid campaigns. Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter also offer their own advertising tools which are continually being updated, and depending on the nature of your business, you would do well to keep up to date with, as well.
On average, 43% of small businesses spend around 6+ hours per week on social media. While time equates to money, marketers still strongly agree that advertising and promotion costs and efforts have drastically lowered since the rise of social media. The markets have become more competitive, trying to show each other up by using more innovative and attractive techniques.
Running a business and attempting to catch up with the many innovations that are happening in the world of social media can be quite overwhelming, especially for those who aren’t well-versed in how the Internet works. In today’s digital age, it wouldn’t do your business any good to ignore all this information about creating a competitive, online marketing presence. In fact, it’s a must, and requires just as much attention and effort. In reality, some businesses have marketing efforts that may seem too amplified for a simple product portfolio—and that has made all the difference in their online marketing success.
