Social media, the term itself might sound ‘offbeat’ to small business owners. After all, you might wonder – “how on earth is social media related to my small business success?” The answer is YES because social media can be utilized to promote your product and draw in a score of potential buyers to your web entity (your business site) and thereby increasing the chances of a sale. Moreover, your small biz would get outstanding exposure with targeted promotion on social media platforms all by investing peanuts (literally), which would have never been possible with traditional advertisements. Let me explain by citing an example –
Here’s a scenario. You run a small business which involves selling cupcakes. Now going by the traditional marketing practices, what would be your approach to increasing the sale? Obviously, you would invest in newspaper ads, invest in sponsorships at local events, print and distribute pamphlets, offer discounts on purchases, or even shoot a product commercial and put it live on air (FM stations) or on your local cable television network for a fee. All of these would obviously give your cupcakes some good exposure. But the investment incurred wouldn’t be 100% targeted to your audience. Much of what you spend wouldn’t give you the much-needed Return on Investment (ROI) that you deserve. Enter social media, and you can feel the difference yourself. Social media promotions are highly targeted and every dollar you spend will be accounted for. So, there is no waste of resources or money and moreover, your cupcakes will gain much popularity as compared to traditional adverts and that too soon!
Now that you can see that investing in social media promotion is the best way for small business success, let’s get down to the next level.
Building a small biz promotion strategy – Strategizing is crucial to achieving small biz success on social media. First, you need to know the USP of your product. For example, if you’re selling cupcakes then make sure your cakes have something ‘unique’ to offer that no one else does. The Unique Selling Proposition (USP) or the high point of your product is the one factor that will help your product to stand out from the rest. The entire success of the social media promotion for your small biz will depend on the USP of your product. So at first create something unique and lovable. Then strategize your campaign after conducting thorough market research. Once your small biz strategy is ready, it’s time for the ‘flame test’. To grow your campaign successfully make use of tools to constantly check your progress for example if you are running an Instagram profile of your business use the Instagram analyzer tool to regularly check your account performance.
Conducting Hot and Cold tests – Hot tests are usually an ‘all out’ promotion which involves a direct call to action for the social media audience to respond to a promotional campaign and also includes lucrative giveaways for the respondents. ‘Hot’ tests are launched usually targeting some special occasion like Christmas, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day and so on. ‘Cold’ tests however have a different set of characteristics. First of all, there’s no CTA or Call to Action content for the promotions. The only catch would be to connect with the audience emotionally and in turn, slip in your invitation to visit your small biz product page. Cold tests usually do not target big festivities but the more personal ones like birthdays, anniversaries, baby showers, proms and so on. Social media success for small biz can be achieved only by connecting with the right people and through uninterrupted communication and relationship building. So hiring a social media promotion specialist should be something you must think about in the long run. Till then read on to know more.
Identifying pressure points – The success of any small business depends on how well the owners or the management identifies the pressure point of their target customers. Once you know to what situation and objects your target audience is ‘most’ vulnerable, capitalize by fine-tuning your social media campaign in that direction, the rest is magic!
Measuring your small biz success – Not to mention, you can measure your small biz success on SM(social media) platforms too by using both free and paid tools (as and when required). The only thing you have to do is know and apply it. Remember, business promotion on traditional media (Newspapers, TV and Radio) and on Social Media is as different as chalk and cheese. So before you make the switch learn and educate yourself, or for that matter, opt for professional guidance from an SMM expert and then go about setting up small biz promotional campaign. May success be yours!
Promoting your small biz through social media marketing can be highly rewarding given that you understand its true potential and know the tricks of the trade. A highly targeted and precise marketing approach is needed in order to achieve business success on this dynamic and popular networking medium. This article offers you an insider’s look at how to go about conducting social media promotions for small businesses. It is also an expert in small business investments and helps SMEs to achieve business success by guiding them on how to achieve 8a Certification Small Business Administration.
