Benefits of Social media Marketing for Small Businesses
The strategic use of social media can help small businesses Increase brand awareness, improves website traffic, and attract new customers.
Social media has numerous benefits for your small business. At face value, it may seem overwhelming but it’s so important that 92% of marketers use social media while 80% said that it increased traffic to their websites. In 2018, 77.6% of small businesses reported that they were using social media to promote their business with Facebook being their top platform.
However, this shows that 22.4% are not yet using social media for their small businesses. Could this be you?
Before diving in, let’s first define social media.
According to Agency Central, social media can be described as computer-mediated tools that allow people, companies and other organizations to create, share or exchange information.
At first, social media was seen as merely a personal means of communication with no commercial value to businesses. However, the use of Social media has evolved with time to be a great tool for business. It allows businesses to send out a message that can be viewed instantly by millions of people in the world.
While large business focuses on expensive forms of marketing, social media marketing is rather inexpensive and a great place for small businesses to thrive if well tapped.
Having addressed the general uses of social media by small businesses, let’s go into the business of the day.
How does social media benefit your small business?
Brand awareness
Social media is great for creating awareness of your brand image and for your brand identity. With 2.38 billion monthly active users on Facebook, this is huge visibility for your small business. People connect with your brand based on your presentation on the social media platform. The content on the platforms also speaks for the brand and its values. If people understand what your business stands for, this leads to lead generation and increase in sales.
Advertising
Social media provides for large marketing campaigns at affordable costs. An average cost-per-click (CPC) of a Facebook Ad is $1.86 and cost-per-thousand-views (CPM) is $11.20. If your business can put up a high-quality campaign, then it can be able to advertise to the huge potential customer base online without worrying about a very big budget.
Engagement and interaction
Normally, businesses interact with their customers using phone numbers and email addresses. However, this takes a long time. How do you get quicker engagement and interaction?
Your guess is right, social media.
Social media platforms allow your business to speak to potential and established clients directly. There is no limitation on the voice to use and you can establish your brand voice that best fits what you’re promoting. Moore and Smalley describe social media as a method of connection, sharing, and engagement with customers, clients, investors and beyond.
Customer Reviews and Feedback
Social Media allows for customers to share their experiences with your band. Some like Facebook provide for reviews and recommendations while others like Instagram and Twitter allow for commenting and retweeting. Use of customer feedback is a great way of promoting your brand. When a customer leaves a positive review of your brand, they increase your trustworthiness and affirm the quality of your brand, leading to increased sales and brand recognition.
Negative feedback is also good for your business. It acts as a mirror to the business to show where it is going wrong and areas of improvement. By engaging with the customers by apologizing for the bad service rendered, it shows that you are human and that you care about your customers.
So as you can see, social media benefits your small business by brand awareness, advertising, engagement and interaction, and customer reviews and feedback. We understand if all this is overwhelming to do. Here at Wallet Alley, we have a few products that can help meet your social media needs. Contact us today and see what we can do for you.