Small Business Marketing

Social media marketing can reveal itself to be a harsh reality, especially if you don't understand the ins and outs and what you can actually expect in terms of returns on your investment (ROI). Once your website is up and running, you should choose a marketing strategy that allows potential customers to get to know who you are, what you do, and why they should pick you over your competitor. The goal for every business regardless of size is to reach new prospects. Before you embark on a social media marketing campaign, it's wise to understand the pros and cons.

The good, the bad and the ugly

Social media platforms were initially designed for socializing; however, for some time now, they have gained serious momentum and turned into a prevailing and often preferred tool for marketing businesses online. In 2020 Facebook reached over 1.5 billion users worldwide. Those numbers, alone, are staggering. Yet, these numbers are not going to guarantee you anything. In order for your local business to reach new prospects, get conversions, and repeat loyal clients, which your business depends on, you will need to understand the dark and light sides of social media marketing. More followers will not necessarily translate into more sales. Social media algorithms have noticeably tightened up, making social media marketing strategies more complicated and laborious.

Understanding how social media and social media marketing works

All social media platforms are rented space and are not infallible. Social media engagement rates and views can be terribly disappointing if you are considering embarking on a social media marketing strategy for your local business. In that case, a basic understanding of metrics is required so you can successfully steer your marketing strategy. Here are the basic units, in use, for measuring social media marketing campaigns.

• Impressions: refers to how many times your ad on social media was displayed.
• Clicks: Refers to how often people engaged with your ad by clicking to learn more
• CTR: Refers to the click-through rate on your ads. This is calculated based on the percentage or number of clicks divided by the number of impressions.
• Conversion: conversion happens when a person actually takes action after clicking your ad. Ideally, the action includes them making a purchase. It could turn into a lead if they fill out a form or subscribe to your mailing list.
• CVR: Refers to conversion rates, which is essentially the percentage of clicks that led to an action. It is calculated based on the number of conversions your ad received divided by the number of clicks.
• Viewability: Refers to pricing and performance metrics which pay and track only for impressions which can reach and be seen by prospects. The IAB and Media Ratings Council stipulate that a minimum of 50% of your ad has to be viewable for at least 1 second, 2 seconds for video, in order for it to be considered viewed. The idea behind viewability is to reduce the amount of ads that are never viewed by people.

The above-listed metrics should be applied to your social media marketing campaign, as these will help you evaluate the success of your marketing strategy. Using these metrics will provide you the data needed to analyze and optimize your campaign strategy. 

Pros and cons of social media marketing 

Pros

The costs of social media marketing are attractive. No matter how much or how little you spend, it becomes a moot point if you don't get results. While more traditional marketing will cater to a pre-determined audience, you have no limits with social media marketing when it comes to your audience. You can choose your demographics according to age, sex, social status, and locations. It may sound simple. However, many things can go wrong. For example, if you choose too broad an audience, you risk diluting your marketing strategy and not reaching your ideal audience. Sometimes less is more.

Cons

If you've read this far, then you've probably got some idea of the effort and time required for a successful social media marketing campaign. You'll need to keep your audience interested, and this means new content, on a steady basis, needs to be uploaded to your social media page. You will need to monitor and give prompt replies to people making queries about your services and/or products. Regular engagement with your online customers or potential customers builds trust and gives your brand credibility.

Designing an effective social media marketing strategy for your business requires time and skills. There are no shortcuts if your goal is to improve your customer base, see increased traffic, and a return on your investment. There are many ways to make mistakes. If you are too pushy and aggressively blast your audience with ads, it can have the opposite effect of what you intended.

When you expose your brand and business online, you also leave yourself wide open to criticism and negative feedback on your social media feed. It takes one dissatisfied customer to undo everything you've done.

The ultimate goal of any marketing strategy is to increase brand awareness, educate, inform, and convert to true leads. Many case studies show businesses, including small local businesses, turning to a social media marketing agency in order to get an effective marketing strategy designed for their business and budget. An agency can provide different options, including social media marketing. A study conducted by The Content Factory found the average spent on social media marketing, if you go it alone, is between $200 to $350 a day. If you outsource to a social media marketing agency, the average cost is anywhere from $4,000 to $7,000 a month, which is no more than the per day cost of doing it yourself. 

Whether you are a contractor, an electrician, a veterinarian, or a shop owner, your website is the most important marketing asset your business has. There are many ways of promoting your business online, and social media marketing is not the end-all, be-all. If you are a small business owner, consider contacting a local social media marketing agency, such as Cube Creative Design, for a winning marketing strategy. A smaller agency such as us will give you reliable, successful, long-term marketing strategy designed for your business.

 

We have all heard it said, “buy local”. While we all want to, sometimes it can be hard to find a local company offering the goods or services when we go to Google or large online retailers. This is where Local Search Engine Optimization (Local SEO) comes into play.

Every business, especially local businesses, needs to find the right digital marketing partner that can help them boost their visibility to their customers and clients. This is done using marketing strategies such as search engine optimization (SEO) and other content marketing techniques. In fact, according to Blue Corona, around 80% of people research a company online first before going to the small business's physical store or making a purchase with them. This just shows how important it is for businesses to have a solid digital marketing strategy.

But here's the big question: what are the things to consider when choosing the best marketing agency for your business? 

If you want to find out, don't worry! We got you covered. In this article, we'll present seven important questions you should ask a prospective digital marketing agency or an SEO company to determine whether or not they're the right fit for you:

The statistical doom and gloom of the service and construction industry’s labor market isn’t just theoretical. Many areas of the world, country, and right here in North Carolina feel the pain; talented, experienced workers are hard to find. Numerous friends, prospects, and clients in the industry have looked at me and said simply, “can you help me find people who want to work.”

Obviously, you want to find and hire employees, but how can you find the best so you can build the best team. While it may seem like all hope is lost, there is an opportunity. Like anything, it is going to take some planning and forward-thinking. With that, here are four tips to help you build the best team for service or construction business.

1. What does your perfect employee look like

Think of it like this. You wouldn’t want to do a content marketing campaign without having an audience in mind. Looking for the perfect employee should be no different. The clearer the picture you have of that person in your head, the better off you will be.

Think about what you are looking for, what qualifications do they have, if any. Do they have experience? Are they reliable and hardworking? Now take it a step further, will they fit with your companies culture? 

Once you get to the interview portion, you will want to qualify them just as you would if you were quoting or estimating a job. What are the non-negotiable skills this person will need versus what you can teach them? 

As a friend of mine used to say, there are no pie jobs in the pie factory. Just like there is not a perfect employee. What you need to think about and do is follow the advice of Peter Shutz, “Hire character. Train skill.” Most of the time, you can teach someone how to hammer a nail or sweep the floor, but you can’t teach things like disposition, loyalty, and ethics.

2. Be a magnet for talent

Today’s generations look for places that offer more than money, insurance, and typical benefits. They look at your companies culture, how you treat your employees. 

As an example, one of our clients, Action Service Company, focuses on jobs within an hour’s radius of their shop. The reason being the owner, Carl Stewart, doesn’t want his employees to go home tired and not be able to spend time with their families. 

One of the easiest ways to attract incredible talent is to be the “Cheers” in your field and area. In other words, be the place where everyone wants to be. 

3. Play the long game and plan three steps ahead

In my younger years, I loved to shoot pool. While I was never the best, I would often watch a group of older men play. They would often “run the table.” What I came to realize was they were always looking 1-3 steps ahead. They would take a shot and try to set themselves up for the next. If they couldn’t make the shot, they would try to set up their opponent for an even harder shot.

Now I am not advocating you set up your competitors for failure, but ultimately you want to set yourself up for success. Always be on the lookout for the next great hire. If you can, you want to look and think about six months ahead of when you expect to need another truck on the road or another crew. While that may seem like forever, think about this, how long does it take to find and hire an employee or crew? How long does it take to onboard them and train them in how you prefer things to be done? How long would it take you to set up a truck or van with all the equipment you need?

Now, does six months seem like that long? What about the person with 15 years of experience? They may have some bad habits that you need to work through before letting them loose.

As of this article’s writing, the home and commercial services along with the trades are booming. At the same time, it is hard to know what may happen in six months. A savvy business person will at least attempt to forecast where they may be and want to be in six months, one year, five years, and even ten years. While you still need to remain flexible, it never hurts to start having conversations with prospective employees.

4. Hire slow, fire fast

Chances are you may have heard this phrase before, “Hire slow, fire fast.” In the seasons of time where unemployment around the world is high, the idea of “hire slow, fire fast” may seem insensitive. However, for two reasons, I would say this approach is more compassionate than the alternatives.

This is your business; it will not serve you or your clients if your business becomes bloated and slowly suffocates itself. You need to keep your business healthy and growing!

Secondly, if one person is dragging the rest of your team down, is it worth it? What about the risk of losing good employees to your competition because you are unwilling to let one person go. Remember, lack of courage is not equal to having compassion.

Future Employees: How and where to find them

As long as there are people on this earth, we will need people to build, repair, and clean up after each other. Therefore I want to make a bold prediction. I think we will see an influx of the next generation looking to fill these jobs. The question remains, where do you find them at and how can we educate the future generations about these careers.

Utilize inbound marketing methods for recruitment

You may be saying, how can I use inbound or content marketing to find employees? The answer is simple, you do it the same as if you were trying to sell to them, and in a sense, you are. You are trying to sell them on a career in your field and with your company.

Look to social media

Social media can be a great place to highlight your companies culture. Show the fun side of the business. Show and communicate how you care for your employees and their families if that is important to you and your future employees.

Reach out to high schools, technical and community colleges

Recruiting students while they are still in school will give you a captive audience and talent pool from which to pick from. Consider starting an apprenticeship program or having interns during your peak times. This will provide you with a chance to have a trial run with a potential employee. If they are a good fit, then for a little bit of time invested, you have already trained and onboarded them in how you want things done.

If you need help or want to learn more about how inbound marketing or social media can help with your employee recruitment, contact us, we would be happy to have a conversation!