When it comes to social media marketing, many small business owners feel one of two things—that it hasn’t been successful for them, or that it’s already too late to start. Well, I am here to tell you that it is never too late to start and I am going to tell you how you can make your social media successful.
Social media is a powerful way to expand your audience and engage with your customers. Let’s start making your social media bring in new customers and create a community that employees, past customers, and new customers want to be a part of.
Ready to take your social media to that next step? Then don’t miss this episode!
Learn more about Katie and Next Step Social Communications: https://www.nextstepsocialcommunications.com
Katie Brinkley 0:02
Hey there. This is Katie Brinkley and you’re listening to Rocky Mountain marketing. This podcast is all about helping Colorado bass small business owners, entrepreneurs and professionals discover the strategies and systems that take their marketing to all new heights. Let’s dive into today’s episode.
Welcome back to the podcast. Now, many of my clients are small business owners, so they have a lot of different hats to wear. Typically one of the following now, whether it’s social media, blog, writing or email campaigns, gets lost in the demand of the everyday hustle. But all of these are extremely important to your business’s success and growth. When it comes to social media marketing, many small business owners feel one of two things, one, that it hasn’t been successful for them, or two, that it’s already too late to start. Well, I’m here to tell you that it is never too late to start. And I’m going to tell you how to make your social media successful for your small business. Social media is a powerful way to expand your audience and engage with your customers. Now let’s start making your social media bring in new customers and create a community that employees past customers and most importantly, new customers want to be a part of. Okay, let’s start with the numbers. Consider that there are more than 3 billion people using social media networks across the globe. And these people are using social to engage with brands. When you have a limited marketing budget, it’s important that you spend it wisely to get the most for your money. Marketing through social media is one of the most versatile and cost effective strategies that small businesses can use to reach their target audience and boost sales over time. That’s why 97% of marketers are using social media to reach their audiences. Why be part of the 3% that are missing out on connecting with your potential customers. There’s no reason that you need to be on every social media channel, either focus on the one that makes the most sense for your brand and be 100% engaged on it. 70% of the United States population is on at least one social media platform, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or YouTube, or one of the many others out there, find the social media channel that you think makes the most sense to your brand, and just go all in on it. And I’m sure you’re saying, I don’t know which one I even need to be on. That’s fine. Try a few out for 30 or 60 days, create the content in the community that you want your brand to be associated with on day three platforms. There are a number of important stats you can monitor when you’re trying to grow these new communities, see which one has the most growth, and then see which one has the most engagement. When I say engagement, think likes, comments, shares, and then make the decision on which platform is going to make the most sense for your brand, not which one you like to be on the most. If you’re a photographer, then Instagram is probably going to be the space that you need to be on for your business. But if you’re a management training, or if you’re a consultant, LinkedIn could be great. There’s no way to tell, but go in on three platforms for 30 or 60 days and monitor it and see which one, your audience is telling you. They want to hear more from you, Vaughn. Okay, and now that you’ve figured out which platform you’re going to go all in on, you have to be active on it. I cannot stress this enough. Consistent posting with your audience will help you stay in the front of their minds. I mean, social media makes it extremely easy to connect with your target audience if you’re active on the channels that they use the most often. In other words, don’t make your audience come to you go to your audience. If you aren’t already on social media, you could be missing out on an important chance to connect with your customers and engage new leads. Now up next, we’re going to discuss social media advertising. Sadly, just creating good content isn’t good enough anymore. Okay, I know that I’m always advocating for creating quality, organic content, and you need to do that, please, please always create good content. However, if you want to reach new audiences, and bring in new sales, you do need to spend some money on the platforms, nothing in life is free anymore. Anyone. So for example, on Facebook, unless you are creating consistently amazing content for every single post, it still is only going to reach between one and 3% of your total followers, which is crazy, right? And it’s so frustrating. I know. I mean, if you think about it, it totally makes sense. As a consumer, even if you do follow a bunch of brands and businesses that you like, you still really want to hear about your friends and family a little bit more right? And Facebook knows that so they give businesses and brands a little bit of a lower ranking on the Facebook algorithm. One thing that I want to emphasize though, is social media marketing isn’t just about creating new leads when you create a social media ad You actually will get a chance to interact with your audience and learn more about them. And this is so important to your organic content. You can use social media to learn the wants and needs of your potential customers, you can establish yourself as an authority as a resource users turn to because they trust you and your business. In addition to this direct contact, you can also discover a great deal about your audience through the data gathered on the platforms. At the most basic level, you can quickly find out what types of ads work for your audience, you’ll learn what appeals to them, and how you can gain their attention. So you can create more ads like that and spend less money on those ads, because you know, they’re already going to do well with the people you’re targeting. The Facebook pixel tool is a game changer. It allows you to see the types of people that are clicking on your content, and whether or not they’re actually converting, or if they need to be retargeted. With a new ad, you can see what people are doing once they go to your website, if they’re making the purchase, if they’re going to numerous pages, what pages that they’re ending on. This is an incredible tool that really allows you to focus in on what type of ad to do for the next type with your audience. Over time, you’ll gain a better sense of who your ideal customer is and how you can actually serve them and give them the exact content that they’re craving from your business. This information just isn’t available in traditional marketing models. Certainly not for such a small investment. That’s one of the greatest benefits of marketing through social media is that it’s extremely cost effective. Social media marketing can help you cut marketing costs without sacrificing results. Most of your social media results will come from investing time and creating and publishing content, as well as having conversations with your fans and followers. The good news is that even just for a few hours every week, you can have significant results. In fact, the CRM tool HubSpot recently reported that 84% of marketers were able to generate increased traffic with as little as six hours of effort spent on social media per week. Depending on your goals and the scope of your campaign. It is relatively inexpensive to run paid ads on social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, no matter how small your budget is, you’re still able to make an impact on these channels to reach and convert new leads. Social media is unlike any traditional marketing. It gives you the opportunity to connect with fans and followers every time that they log in. Keep your social posts entertaining and informative and your followers will be glad to see your content show up in their feeds, keeping you at the top of their mind so that you’re the first stop when they’re ready to make that purchase. And really what is better than brand loyalty. Often, small businesses struggle to get their name known without feeling like it’s being drowned in the wave after wave of all the advertising, especially when you’re a new or small business, the the big guns are out there and they have way more budget to spend. But this is especially important for the service industries where it isn’t always easy to distinguish between one company and the next. Brand loyalty is one solution to this dilemma. It helps ward off the competition and keeps your audience engaged and excited about your brand. Now fortunately, effective social media strategy helps establish and strengthen brand loyalty. This means less effort without keeping the new customers you’ve worked so hard to convert. brands who engage with their current customers and their target audience on social media channels. Enjoy higher loyalty from their customers. Engaging with your customers and leads on social media help you build a stronger customer relationship. This can set you apart from your competition by showing your audience how your brand is different. And reinforcing that your business cares about their customers. By engaging with your audience through valuable compelling content and conversation. You can work to turn happy customers into brand advocates. Once you start engaging on the platform, your audience is going to know it your followers will know that there’s a voice on the other end of the line. I like to think of social media as a big party. And if you go to a party, the last thing that you want to have happen is get stuck in a corner with some stranger who just keeps going on and on and on and on and on and on and on about themself. They never ask you. Hey, so tell me a little bit about you. Where are you from? What do you like to do? They just pin you on the corner, tell you all about themselves and then get up and leave. And the party’s over and it was Hey me over here. I’m doing Okay to, you have to think of social media the same way. It says if you’re at a party, and you want to have that open conversation with them. When you’re active on social media, you get the opportunity to interact directly with your customers and give them the chance to interact directly with your business. Open up the door for the conversation. They’ll tell you what they want to hear what questions they have what they want to see from your social channel. Unlike traditional media, which offers only one way communication, social media is a two way street. If you want customers and your followers to be engaged, you have to be engaged yourself. Stay active, respond to comments and questions on your own social media posts in a way that’s appropriate for your brand. I say this time and time again, don’t just post and walk away. That’s the absolute worst thing you can do your being that person that the party that comes to the party, tell someone all about themselves, and then doesn’t stick around to hear their answer or doesn’t ask them how they’re doing or what they’re interested in. Make social media social again, and stick around, engage with their customers, because you’re going to be astonished at what they’re going to have to say. And they’re going to be the best advocates for your brand going forward, because they know that you’re there listening. Lastly, it’s important to be on social media so that you can know what people are saying about your competition. Monitoring the competition on social media means you’ll be aware when your competitors launch new products around promotions, and release new reports or data. Really, no matter what industry you’re in, or who your target market is, there’s a good chance that your competitors are already present and active on at least one social media channel. But if your competitor is there, then that means there’s room for you and your business to be there too. There’s opportunity for your brand to do well on these channels. But it means that some of your potential customers may already be talking with the competition. As we speak. Follow your competitors pages. See what type of posts do well with your ideal audience on your competitors pages, track their likes their shares, what posts seem to do really well, and what posts seem to miss the mark, create the content that your audience wants to hear the most. And you can win new customers in the process of putting out excellent content. When it comes to competing with other small businesses. This is an area that is still largely untapped. Some of your competitors might have dipped their toes into the social media scene, but most of them are probably not operating with a well formed strategy. If you can plan and execute a true social media campaign, you still have the chance to stake your claim on whatever social media platform you choose. Social media marketing is here to stay, and you need to start taking advantage of it. There’s a lot to learn. But it doesn’t mean you have to drop all the things that you already do really well. Instead, make sure that your audience knows about all that great stuff. If you start small and work smart, you’ll have the first post and then your first ad campaign behind you. And you’ll realize that it isn’t too scary.
Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Rocky Mountain marketing. As always, I’d love to hear from you. You could visit my website at www.nextstepsocialcommunications.com or connect with me on LinkedIn. Just look for Katie Brinkley. Let’s keep taking your marketing to new heights.