When it comes to small business management, you always have to find new strategies to grow your company. The reality is you might be able to find a way to get your business know but it won’t last forever. It’s why we think small businesses have a social media advantage over other brands. It can attract new customers and make them more loyal.
We believe small companies have a big advantage when it comes to social media marketing. The main difference is the ability of small businesses to be transparent and connect with their audience in a better way than big brands. The goal of social media marketing is to connect, interact & engage with your audience.
When it comes to small business management, you always have to find new strategies to grow your company. The reality is you might be able to find a way to get your business know but it won’t last forever.Another way small businesses can gain an advantage on social media is by utilizing scalable solutions such as the best llc services, which can handle the complex administrative tasks and allow the entrepreneurs more time to engage with and grow their online audience.
Why leveraging social media?
Social media is a place to share content but also to interact with your customers. More and more, the brands that succeed are those who start conversations with their prospects.
With over 3.5 billion social media users according to Emarsys, it’s no wonder most business owners believe it’s important to be active on social media. This number is equal to roughly 45% of the entire population of the earth. The reality is your marketing should happen where there are the most eyeballs and it’s exactly what social media is.
What makes social media management even more attractive is the fact that it’s pretty easy to get started with. You just need to create a few social media profiles, make a few posts and start answering comments & messages. Good profiles I recommend building are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin & Youtube.
We always recommend having a social media plan before getting started. The goal here is to be active and consistent, if you aren’t, it won’t be worth it. In order to do that, we recommend having a social media calendar where you can organize what you post on which day and where.
Why small businesses have a social media advantage?
Social media is not a result a the amount of followers you have but rather the connection you have with those people. Brands like Nike have really been able to make their brand personal which made people truly connect with them.
We’ve seen in the last couple of years, social media accounts with millions of followers but little engagement. It’s why small businesses have a strong social media advantage over other brands.
1. Community & individuals focused
Having a small business provides amazing flexibility compared to medium and large businesses. As a small business, you can pivot rapidly into a growing market or change the direction of your company in a matter of a few days. It also enables you to be closer to your employees and clients.
This ability to be closer also makes them better at connecting with their community and the individuals inside. A lot of small businesses are heavily involved in their communities and thus they create a true connection with them. They can also benefit from their community by partnering up with certain members to create events or even advertise their small business.
By using social media, a small business can use their ability to connect with their community and the people inside at a much bigger scale. They can answer every comment and message personally, thus making everyone feel well taken care of. This ability to quickly reply on social media is huge.
Social media is also a great platform to gather reviews and what we call “user generated content”. User generated content is essentially content with your product or service created by your customers. This content (after having asked the permission to the consumer) can be used for advertising purposes.
By being able to share constantly on social media and creating new connections with people, small businesses can really benefit more from a strong social media presence than large businesses. They will be able to gain more loyal customers through their personal approach.
2. Affordable advertising cost
When it comes to social media marketing, you can get interesting results for free. In fact, by posting frequently and answering comments & messages, you should be able to generate a return on your time since there’s no investment to do here. Of course, if you spend, you can pour fuel on your results and watch them blow up.
You can run ads on a lot of different social media platforms such as Linkedin, Facebook, Youtube & Instagram. At K6, we work with all those channels to help your company grow. In fact, if you just want us to take a look at your business and give you ideas, just request a proposal. We’d love to help!
If you want to get started on social media advertising, I highly recommend taking a look at our blog! It’s one of our passion at K6 to grow our client’s business using social media. Here’s an example of a Facebook ad we created that is crushing it:
Apart from boasting, social media is a great platform to just connect with people and gain visibility. You can communicate easily to all your fans with a single post which is super effective. You can also stay up-to-date with what your competitors are doing, which is something we recommend for market positioning.
In social media, you not only can advertise to your customers so they buy more and remain loyal but also find new customers. This ability makes it ideal for brands that want to generate strong stable growth. Being active on social media also increases the trust people have in your brand.
This ability that small business owners have of knowing their clients so well also enables them to create content that makes them relate more. More personalized content also tends to reduce the cost of social media advertising. Apart from social media, traditional marketing holds the impact of reaching audiences in mass through business flyers, business cards, posters, and brochures. But you can’t rely on one medium, leverage every possible option to get the maximum result.
3. Social media marketing partnerships
When it comes to social media marketing, most small business have the ability to collaborate with many different local brands. You can talk to your neighbourhood area and find some non competing companies opened to advertising with you. Of course, you need to make sure both of you target the same demographics.
You can do what we call, partnership offers, such as offering a meal and an event ticket. At K6, we love bringing our clients together when it benefits them. It could be merging a hotel night and a festival or even two eCommerce store’s product together to create an amazing offer for their customers.
After you’ve built your offer, it’s time to choose the social media marketing strategy you’d like to use. For instance, you can run Facebook ads or even just an Instagram promotion. This is really up to you and your needs, but if you need help on that end, don’t hesitate to shoot us a message.
We also recommend that before you start your promotion, you find what is the goal of the promotion. Is it to reach more people, to make more sales or to get new prospects? Either way, knowing it beforehand will ensure you make the right social media marketing strategy.
4. Personal midas touch
When it comes to social media marketing, creating personalized content is very important. It enables consumers of feeling compelled to learn more about your brand. In terms of small business management, being as close as possible to your consumers can help you better understand them personally.
Small businesses are able to truly connect and have meaningful conversations with their customers. With this approach, you can make your customers feel special and show them that you truly understand their problems. It’s also a good way of being transparent about your business and share your voice & message to rally people around your brand.
This personal touch you bring to your conversations doesn’t only have to happen physically. By leveraging social media, you can share content as well as answer messages & comments. You can even thank the people who have shared your post because it means a lot.
Big brands are at a major disadvantage because they can’t have a personalized answer for each customer. They generally use templated answers that feel impersonal and cold. As a small business, you can answer each customer with a personalized answer based on their request.
5. Let’s help small businesses
Everybody loves helping small businesses in their community. In fact, even the big companies create small business events for them to meet and join alliance. Just think about the support banks are trying to give to small businesses.
In Canada, the National Bank of Canada offers to some small business owners to appear in their magazine for free to gain more exposure. They also hold events where you can meet other entrepreneurs in your community. The essence here is that small business have a lot of resources they can tap into.
With COVID this year, a lot of people created a listing of small businesses to encourage people to buy from them. As you can see, people want to help because they love small businesses. They are more unique and personalized.
With this help, small business owners can leverage social media to meet other business owners by connecting with them over there. You can attend events and then connect through social media afterwards. You don’t need to spend tons of cash when you can leverage strong alliances with other companies.