SMEs and local businesses that do not use social network platforms are missing a great opportunity to attract more customers and with it the possibility of reaching new markets and making your company survive.
If you have a small local business, you obviously want to prosper as quickly as possible, right? For this, you need to professionally include a social media marketing strategy in your marketing plan. This is not new or great news, (everyone already knows this) but the key is: strategy or professional plan.
We from Marketing RS very often see many local businesses and SMEs that are participating in social platforms, executing traditional marketing actions without achieving the expected results, or worse, using social channels to publish offers of all kinds without stopping, in the majority with meager or null results.
But don’t worry, if you have a local business, and want to promote it on social networks, here are some tips to start your social media marketing strategy correctly:
- Keep up with trends
When you look at the number of people using social media like Twitter and Facebook, or Instagram it quickly becomes apparent that companies need to make this an essential part of their marketing strategy.
Platforms like Facebook and Twitter have become so prevalent, and popular that people simply hope to find everything they need there. If they can’t find a business, they simply switch to a similar option that maintains a better online presence.
- Establish your own strategy plan
A social media marketing plan should not be complex for a local company, it must have the main data to help you identify your current position, your competition data, the profile of your ideal client and the goals you want to achieve. Plot your goals clear, achievable, and measurable. State your content strategy, the actions to be carried out, and foresee that you will need time, effort and money to achieve your goals.
- Create a brand identity
Local companies face a great deal of competition from other businesses, from medium and large companies in the same category, which often sell products at lower prices as a strategy. The way to defend against these strategies for a smaller company is to convince potential clients of the quality of your service, gain their trust, attend to their needs and show them that it makes sense for them to come to our business instead of going to other companies.
Establishing a brand identity helps to attract customers who really want a more personal shopping experience. Social media allows you to create your own brand personality for your business.
Using Twitter or Facebook, for example, gives your business a voice and a presence. Choose to connect with your followers, ask and listen to them, this way you will build a community that trusts, buys your products and recommends you on social networks.
- Reach new customers
Social networks allow people to share content with each other, at the push of a button, local businesses can use this feature to reach new customers. For this, however, you need attractive and useful content, with tactics that appeal to people.
Generating good shareable content is not as difficult or expensive as you might think. Try to use YouTube so that your clients see behind the scenes of your business. For example, if you use a little creativity, you could use a slide with good photos of your store, with background music to share with your followers on all social networks.
If you do something that attracts and interests your followers and clients, your followers will want to share it with other people, and this action exposes your name, your brand and your business to many more people (virality), who could become your new clients.
- Get your clients involved
If you plan to get the most out of Facebook, Twitter, Pineterst, Insatagram or any other social network, then you have to learn to be social. Generating commitment or engagement with your followers means sharing visual content accompanied by asking questions or requesting their opinion. The idea is to interact and promote the participation of your audience.
Local businesses have several options that they can use to reach their clients for stakeholders, here are some ideas:
- Create a contest for people to share a photo or video advertisement of your business.
- You can ask to share your content giving them the opportunity to win a gift card or product of your business, etc.
- You can also use services like Twitter, Pinterest and Foursquare to advertise limited time offers. (That can boost business on slow days.)
- Use Facebook advertising to attract more people to your business.
- Offer discount coupons only for Fans and exclusive promotions.
Friends, social networks will continue to be increasingly important for companies of all sizes, but especially for SMEs and businesses because they give you the opportunity to compete with companies of other sizes and achieve results, with less investment than traditional marketing.
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