It’s impossible to escape how social media has become a significant part of our daily lives. Living in a pandemic introduced more users to the world of social media for social interaction, gaining information and making purchases. According to datareportal.com, as of January 2022, we have 4.62 billion global social media users*. With figures like this, it’s never been more important for small business owners to tap into the stream of potential customers through social media marketing.
But how can social media marketing benefit small businesses? As experts in digital marketing, we have years of experience in creating successful social media marketing campaigns that consistently result in conversions. In this blog post, we’ve used our expertise to compile a list of 7 key benefits of social media marketing for small businesses.
1. Generate Brand Awareness
When you use social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Youtube you create a personality for your business. Strengthen your branding by adding your company logo to your social profile and content. This breathes life into your brand and helps your target audience to recognise and remember you. Need to delve deeper into brand awareness? Read more about the importance of brand awareness here.
2. Build Trust and Brand Loyalty
Regularly sharing useful content that answers a query, solves a problem or educates your audience will help build trust in your brand. Having a trustworthy presence on social media gives consumers confidence in your brand which helps to legitimise your business. When customers trust you, they are more likely to stay loyal and share their good experiences with others.
3. Increased Traffic to Your Website
The more platforms your social media profiles appear on mean more places people can find your small business. Each time you post a piece of content, you can point your audience toward your website. When that content is useful and entertaining enough, people will share it on their profiles which widens your audience and increases the traffic to your website.
4. Improves Search Engine Visibility
When your content is liked, shared and commented on frequently, it helps to boost rankings on search engines, making you easier to find.
5. Increased Sales and Leads
Nowadays, there are so many ways to increase your sales through social media. Here are two ways small businesses can increase sales through social media:
A. Paid Advertising
Services like Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads, for example, allow users to set up paid ad campaigns to promote sales or services on offer. Ad campaign managers direct traffic from social media to your website or to contact forms. A solid paid social advertising campaign helps to show your business to a targeted audience who are more likely to be interested in your product. Many small businesses benefit from localised advertising on social media to target potential customers in the local area. The main advantage of advertising on social media is that it costs less than standard advertising formats.
B. Content Marketing
This is a free and organic alternative to paid ads. The content can be product information, user-generated content like a product review or an entertaining meme connected to your niche. Sharing your expertise helps to establish authority in your industry. Content is certainly King and the more relevant and consistent it is, the more your audience will build a relationship with you.
6. Connect Virtually With Your Audience
Social media enables you to connect personally with your target audience in a unique way. You can seek feedback on products, show behind the scenes footage of your business or even create giveaways to show your appreciation to your customers. This connection allows you to offer better customer service since you’ll be able to respond to queries and requests promptly and personally.
7. Use Analytics to Understand Your Customers
When you’ve launched your small business onto a social media platform, you can measure your performance using online analytical tools. Your chosen social media platform will give analytic insights but third party software such as Google Analytics can be installed on your website so you can track the user journey after social media. Analytic data tracks the performance of ad campaigns for example or they can tell you what type of content gets the most likes. The world of analytics data gets quite technical so thankfully you can assign that task to a social media marketing team. They can produce a report and translate the analytical jargon into easy to digest information with a plan of action.
At SEM Consultants, we understand that running a small business and managing a successful social media campaign is a lot of work. Why not let our team of professional digital marketers devise a social media strategy that is tailor-made to your business needs. We handle everything from setting up profiles and posting content to monitoring progress and translating analytic data.
Contact us or call our dedicated team of social media specialists on 0121 552 6500 to find out how we can elevate the online presence of your business.
*Figures correct as of 20th April 2022 as published in Digital 2022: Global Overview Report – Datareportal.com