For today's small businesses, social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok offer an essential way to reach clients online. With over 4 billion active social media users worldwide, these channels have become a critical marketing tool for brands of all sizes looking to drive awareness and sales.
In this article, we'll explain exactly how social media marketing works, key strategies small business owners should leverage, and what benefits it can offer compared to traditional advertising avenues. After reading, you'll understand the steps to take to attract more clients, drive engagement, and boost revenue using social platforms.
What Is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing, also known as SMM, is the strategy of businesses using social media platforms to achieve their marketing objectives. SMM involves creating and publishing content on your business's social media channels to build your brand, raise brand awareness, engage your audience, generate conversation, increase sales, and drive traffic to your website. Social media marketing offers companies a platform to engage with existing clients and contact new clients while communicating their brand identity, mission, and culture to the public. Social media managers, content managers, brand managers, public relations managers, and social media strategists use social media marketing.
How Does Social Media Marketing Work?
Major social media platforms have made it easy for companies to access and engage with their potential clients. Social media marketing follows the principles of social media optimization, which involves businesses creating and tailoring content for different social media platforms. These social platforms provide companies with a broad range of tools to promote their content and engage their audience. Most also have built-in data analytic tools to help them track their engagements and online success.
What Are the Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing?
There are five core pillars of social media marketing. They include:
Developing a Strategy
Before using social media to market your services or products, create your overall plan for how this strategy aids your larger marketing goals. You may also define how using each social media channel helps you achieve an aim. You may also schedule the time you plan to use social media and the type of content you'll use. A social media strategy is crucial, as it guides how you undertake your marketing process and determines the success of the process.
Preparing and Publishing Content
The most beneficial content you share can be high quality, timely, and relatable to your audience. Publishing your content could mean anything from posting an image, video, or blog post on your social media profile to sharing someone else's relevant content. You can have a regular publishing schedule to ensure that you're maximizing your social media reach and communicating to your audience that your business is accessible, professional, and reliable.
Listening to and Engaging With Your Audience
As your social media presence and following grow, so can conversations about your brand. People may message you directly, tag you in their posts, comment on your posts, or discuss your brand on their social media channels. By monitoring social media conversations about your brand, you can determine how the public perceives your products and company structure.
Monitoring Analytics
It's vital to track data about your social media marketing campaigns to understand how they perform individually and compared to your other advertising efforts. You may focus on your audience's reach or follower count within a specific time frame. Social media platforms offer analytic tools that make it easier to compare your numbers on different platforms.
Developing Advertising
Social media channels provide a platform to advertise your products and services for free and at an additional fee. Social media ads enable you to reach a wider audience and target users based on their client behavior and demographics. Using paid marketing strategies may be most beneficial for new businesses or when promoting a temporary offer.
7 Pros of Social Media Marketing
The following are the pros of social media marketing:
Reach a Larger Audience
Major social media platforms give your small business access to a large audience that can choose to follow your profiles. To start:
- Create business pages on Facebook and Instagram
- Design an eye-catching profile, adding logos and product visuals
- Use relevant #hashtags so users can discover you
- Run targeted ads to reach more potential local clients
Unlike traditional print and TV, there are no strict demographic limits on who you can reach on social media. With four billion+ users globally, you can drive awareness about your small biz to new audiences you didn't even know existed!
Connect Directly With Your Audience
Social media allows you to connect directly with your audience. Because people choose to follow your social media accounts, you can tell that they are interested in your business. Understanding how the public perceives your brand puts you in a better position to re-strategize and adapt a new social media strategy that meets your audience's needs. Connecting directly with your audience enables you to get to know them better, and you can:
- Deliver more relatable, personalized, and valuable content
- Resolve disputes faster and easier
- Understand how your audience perceives your business.
- Build brand loyalty
The greater the interaction and connection between your business and your clients, the more comfortable they can become with your brand. Providing consistent updates, quality content, and exceptional customer service may help clients create an emotional connection to your company. This ultimately leads to brand loyalty.
Monitor Client Feedback
Social media is a quick way to share information with a large audience. People from across the world in any location or time zone can get access to your content immediately after you publish it. They can also engage with this content in a variety of ways. As a brand, you can easily monitor client feedback and quickly manage comments to answer client questions or monitor brand perception.
Get Access to Many Growth Opportunities
You can sign up and create a business account on most social media platforms for free. You can also publish organic content and get access to a large pool of potential clients for free. This is beneficial for your company because you may be able to get more advertising for less money or be able to allocate more of your marketing budget to other endeavors. Using social media opens up many opportunities for your business to gain valuable leads and sales at little or no cost.
Grow Your Business at a Higher Rate
Social media can have a higher lead-to-close rate than traditional marketing and advertising because of the personalized experience and the direct connection and communication between businesses and clients that social media offers; clients are likely to move faster through the sales funnel. This can be beneficial because it leads to more conversions and, ultimately, greater profits.
Get Access to Paid Advertising
With social media marketing, you can invest in paid advertisements to reach a larger audience and make more significant returns. Different social platforms have multiple options to engage in paid campaigns. Paid advertisements allow people who may not follow your social media channels to see your content. This option also enables you to tailor your advertisements to target people looking for similar products and services. This allows you to expand your reach and get new followers, leads, and conversions for your business.
3 cons of social media marketing
The following are the cons of social media marketing:
Time-consuming Practice
While publishing organic content on social media is free, creating content may take a lot of time, money, and effort, depending on the platform you are using and the type of content you want to share. To maintain an active social media presence and make an effective online marketing effort, you may spend a lot of time creating graphics, writing posts, and engaging with members of your target audience. Setting specific times to work on content creation, review comments and feedback, and use a scheduling program to post your content, or getting help from a professional company can help save time throughout your social media marketing strategy.
Nonfavorable Publicity
You may find negative reviews or comments when searching your business's internet and social media channels. Although you can't control what people say about your business on social media, you can control how you respond to their comments. Try to answer promptly and professionally to improve your chances of retaining existing clients and to communicate to a newer market that you're a reliable brand.
Lengthy Result Manifestation
Social media enables quick communication with your audience, but it might not manifest consistent results during the early stages of your active social media presence. You may engage in social media marketing for a long time before you see an increase in engagements or a return on your investment. Remember that the process could take longer than expected, and continue to plan and follow the necessary steps to make it successful in the future.
Final Thoughts
While it does take consistency and patience, social media marketing can offer incredible opportunities for small businesses to expand their reach, foster client loyalty, and ultimately drive more revenue online. By taking the time to create branded profiles, craft valuable content, and engage your audience across platforms like Facebook and Instagram, you can build authentic connections that pay dividends for your brand down the road. Don't expect overnight success, but stick with it. Social media has the potential to transform small businesses.
Interested in learning more about how social media marketing can specifically benefit your small business? Reach out for a free 30-minute consultation. I'll review your current marketing tactics and goals for growing online and make recommendations tailored to your brand on which social strategies you should focus on implementing first. You'll walk away with clarity around what platforms matter most and three actionable tips you can apply over the next month to establish your digital presence and connect with potential clients. Whether you're new to social or struggling to gain traction, I'm here to offer strategic guidance so you can tap into its benefits sooner rather than later.
