Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses

What is social media marketing? Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn which seeks to connect your business with your audience while helping it grow; Through brand awareness, driving website traffic and increasing sales. 

This digitally transformed age has brought a lot more opportunities for many people, businesses and everyone in between. With the numerous benefits that digital platforms can provide for all different kinds of businesses, it's important to start taking advantage of this; Especially when it comes to new platforms, to expand operations and boost business growth. While it's true that websites and social media platforms can all be effective for promoting products and services, it's also just as important to use these channels effectively in order to strengthen one of the most important aspects of any business: customer loyalty. Unlike other methods available, social media offers the unique benefit of being able to connect with your business' customers on a personal level. 

So if you’re running a small business, or a multinational brand, here is why you should be taking advantage of social media marketing 

How can social media marketing benefit your business? 

1. Generate Leads, which will boost your businesses Conversions! Additionally, eCommerce is now a common addition within social media sites. This means not only can you engage with your audience through likes and shares, but actually guide them to conversions through social media! With a wider audience and more eyes looking and invested in what your business is all about, this will help to increase generation of leads. And with increased leads this will help send your conversion numbers through the roof! It’s all a numbers game. 
2. Create Brand Awareness and find New Audiences. Brand awareness is one of the most important aspects of a marketing campaign, at least initially. By increasing brand awareness you also increase the likelihood of drawing in new audiences who may be interested in your business. It is very important to introduce potential customers to your product or service in the right way, because just like meeting in person - with brand awareness - first impressions really count! 
3. Learn more about your audience. By tracking engagement on social media, this allows you to gain insights about your audience, such as demographics, which can then be used to narrow down your target audience for paid campaigns.

How to start an effective social media campaign for your business

Now that you know how important social media marketing is for small businesses, let's get you started in the right direction. 

A smart strategy starts from the ground up. Firstly make sure that all your business social profiles are all complete with images and up to date information. Secondly you need to decide on the businesses brand voice/tone, as this will be across all of your social platforms and it is very important to remain consistent. Now once this is all mapped out and ready, it’s time to think about what your posting strategy is going to be. What kind of content creations you will be posting, how often will you post to the different channels, who will be in charge of managing all of the scheduling, which social media channels align best for your company and your audience whether that be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or any of the many others, who will be maintaining the social media community management and what style of content works best for your audience - static images, videos, blogs. 

Maintaining your social media marketing strategy

And now that you have started posting some great content, it is even more so important to analyse what worked well and what not so much. This can be done through social media analytics tools. Some key metrics to take into account are your engagement numbers, where your audience is coming from, what time of day works best for publishing content, the number of clicks you have. All of these metrics will help to further develop your social media marketing strategy in order to get it running like a well oiled machine. Maintaining channels that provide your audience with valuable content is a must. 

Investing in social media doesn't require a big budget, but cracking into the benefits of social marketing, especially moving towards the future, is imperative. The online market is only growing, and the numbers show that if you’re not online, you're missing out on benefits in social media, eCommerce, customer service, and a universal brand. Even if you are a little business in the middle of New Zealand - you could have the potential to gain customers all the way from France! 

At Firefly we understand social media management and we offer a range of marketing services such as social media services from social media ads to full social media content strategies including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and so much more! For a no obligations quote call Firefly today on 0800 440 714. We look forward to helping you light up your 2020 business goals!