6 Social Media Marketing Tips for your Small Business
As a small business owner, taking advantage of your social media presence is no longer optional. It is essential. Those who neglect their digital presence risk being left behind and overtaken by the competition so it’s crucial to make this a priority.
If you are on a tight budget and perhaps don’t have the means to hire a social agency to take care of your marketing efforts for you, then here are 6 tips that you can incorporate yourself.
1.Speak to your customers
You can’t build a successful marketing strategy based on assumptions. You may already have a good understanding of who your customers are and what their needs are, but if you want to build long-lasting relationships with them, you’ll need to dig deeper. Interviews and surveys are free to run. You can start small by focusing on a few, specific themes you want to explore further and then branch out. After all, a handful of insights are better than none.
2.Research competitors and differentiate yourself
This is important because, as a small business, you want to add value to your local market. Think about what you can offer potential customers that other businesses can’t. Even if you do find yourself offering a very similar service to other businesses around you, you can still play to your strengths in order to differentiate yourself from them.
3.Get your website basics right
Consumers are becoming increasingly more demanding in terms of the experience they expect from a website. It needs to be fast loading with exceptional ease of use. As a smaller business, you might not have the resources or budget to create something spectacular, but with free, online resources, you can still get the basics right, at least.
Google PageSpeed Insights is a great tool that you can start using straight away to identify any issues and reduce the loading time of your website. Social agency use this tool for insights.
4.Create professional, visual content
Visual content still prevails and should be an essential part of your marketing strategy even social agency recommend for brands.
Video, in particular, is an area that has grown at an incredible rate in recent years and these statistics show why:
- 94% of marketers agree that video has helped increase user understanding of their product/service.
- 87% say it helped them increase sales
- 86% use video as a marketing tool
You might not have the same budget as the big names in your industry, but you can always partner with a local freelancer to get your video campaign up and running.
5.Focus on a primary social channel
If you’re feeling overwhelmed and don’t know where to start, begin by focusing on social media then you could hire a social media agency. Which can help you use the platform most relevant to your business and where your customers are most active. As a small business owner, you probably won’t have the resources to effectively manage more than one channel, so it’s important to maximize the time that you do have available.
6.Partner with local influencers
Influencer marketing isn’t just for big businesses. Working with influencers by having them recommend your product to their following can be extremely effective. For example, a local restaurant could reach out to food bloggers to raise awareness in exchange for a free meal.
From giveaways to brand ambassadors, influencer marketing can come in many different forms, so it’s important to begin with an end goal in mind. What are your marketing goals and what are you trying to achieve?
From insightful market research to a marketing strategy that delivers, there are plenty of digital marketing techniques that small businesses can adopt without breaking the bank.