Social Media Marketing Strategy for Small-Medium Businesses

With the passage of time, many social media has evolved that are helping businesses to grow faster. People are leveraging those social media to get more customers.

Social media marketing is the way of integrating different social media to reach more potential customers, building brand awareness, driving website traffic, etc.

The leading social media platforms available at present are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.

1. Increasing brand awareness

Brand awareness dictates the degree to which your potential customers recognize your products by their names. It also helps you to establish your product in the market by distinguishing them from the competitors. These days social media is playing a vital role in creating brand awareness . Once you become successful in establishing brand awareness, you can think of getting higher customers than usual.

2. Reaching more potential customers

The customers who have not purchased your product but they may if you can communicate your product to them. In a broader sense, everyone in the market is your potential customer. Many internet users feel good to roam around on social media and checking different content. It is found in a study that the social media usage of internet users worldwide is approximately 145 minutes per day, and it is on an increasing trend.

3. Driving more website traffic

Website traffic determines the effectiveness of attracting the audience. If your business has a website, then traffic is vital for you. You can increase website traffic in different ways (being organic SEO one of the most preferable ways for sustained traffic growth over time) and measure that using SEO tools.

Moreover, social media can help you to drive more traffic for your business. You can post the link of content, new deals, and products available on your website to social media. You should also pay attention to optimizing content for the website, using images compressor, free video compressor, SEO-patterned H1s, etc. You can also add the link to your website in your social media profiles and pages. As a result, the audience visiting your social media gets the scope to visit your website, and it generates some extra traffic.

Pro Tip: It's better to follow an SEO checklist once you are dealing with your website traffic.

4. Communication enhancement

Social media formulates an excellent scope for you to maintain effective
communication with your audiences. You can maintain one-way and two-way communication with your customers, clients, and users with different social media. You can post other updates of your product, roadmap, business on social media.

A better strategy for anything can help you to gain more efficiency. That means you will be able to get more output than the input. For successful social media marketing, you need to follow a strategy as well. Here some of the essential steps to be followed in making a strategy are enlisted. You can use this for your social media marketing campaigns. However, you can also have your own research and find better ways and implement that.

1. Understand and specify your niche

To have a better understanding of the niche is the first thing you need to follow. This is not only important for social media marketing but also essential for your entire business. Finding a perfect niche is important for small-medium businesses to create steady revenue growth and establish a flow of loyal audiences. So, have research and specify the niche and your potential customers. Author of the book titled ‘ The 80/20 Principle’ and several other books, Richard Koch said-

Choose the niche that you enjoy, where you can excel and stand a chance of becoming an acknowledged leader.

As mentioned earlier that there are several social media available in the world at present. Once you have fixed the niche you want to operate, you need to understand your customers clearly. That means on which social media your potential customers roam around.

You won’t get 100% accurate results but try to get the closest result. Based on this information, prioritize the social media where you want to operate and run campaigns. It is pretty difficult to remain active on all social media platforms. If you can make it, that will be fantastic.

3. Create Profile/Page/Group

Once you are done with prioritizing social media, your job is to open an account there. You can create your profile, page, and groups. You can focus on Facebook as it is the leading social media platform in the world. While creating your account, you need to look for some essential points.

a. Add as much information as you can to your profile, page, group. It will help your audience to get a better insight into you and your business.
b. Set up your accounts properly with a proper profile picture and cover photo
c. Specify the rules in your Facebook group.

4. Link your channels

This is very important for you to interlink your different social media channels, profiles, pages, and groups. For example: In your personal Facebook profile, you can add the link of your website, other social accounts, contact address, and community. You can do it for your Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube profile as well. So, whenever someone visits your Facebook profile, they get access to your other accounts and vice versa.

If you want to make a community based on Facebook, then Facebook group and page can be a good option. You can interlink both of these.

5. Plan your content

Once you are done with all the setup, it’s time to plan your content, which is very important for your social media marketing. Again, the subject of understanding your niche comes here. You will have to plan your content based on the psychology of your potential customers. You need to look after the following points while planning your content.

a. What will be the number of posts in your social media channels per day/week/month.
b. What type of texts you are going to write to attract the customers.
c. Types of images, videos, gifs, etc., you will use with your text.

Remember, your texts and images should be related to your product or business. The wording of the text should be easy so that all members can understand your message.

6. Schedule your posts

After uploading a few posts, you will see the engagement in your Page or Group. You can then plan to upload the posts in those pick times. If the time doesn’t meet your usual time, you can schedule the posts using different social media post scheduler tools like Buffer.

However, this scheduling feature is available on Facebook groups and pages. You can use tools for other social media accounts. You can also schedule the welcome post for facebook group as well.

Recommended Reading:

1. How To Schedule A Post In Facebook Group
2. All You Need To Know About Facebook Group Insights

7. Run Few Ads

There is no alternative to run ads on social media to reach more potential customers. These days Facebook, Google, and YouTube ads have become popular among small, medium-sized business owners. You can also run few ads on these social media.

But, don’t forget to acquire some knowledge about these ads. You can also take help from some expert hands. But, having some preliminary knowledge will add some extra advantages. Remember, running excessive ads may irritate others and create a negative brand impression.

8. Take help from marketing agencies

Aim to pick the marketing strategy agencies that have the most experience in that specific niche of marketing. You should really work with a creative marketing agency that can take care of all your media needs, including videos, social media posts, and all the elements that will ensure your business is visually appealing.

9. Remain Engaged Always

All the strategies described above will not be that fruitful if you do not remain engaged. Once you post something on social media, people will comment and send you messages in your inbox as it is normal to have queries. The more questions you get, the more engagement you receive from the potential customers. You need to handle all those queries meticulously. Find perfect ways to collect feedback from your customers, call them using business phone providers or send them email surveys.

If the engagement is much, you can increase the number of your team members or implement a ticketing system software that consolidates contact with your clients across all social networks in one spot. You will be able to view all of the questions, which will reduce confusion and speed up your responses.

10. Compare with competitors

Indeed, there will have many customers in the niche you are operating in. It is one of the excellent strategies to compare with the competitors. Make some time to analyze the social media marketing strategies that your competitors follow. You can utilize the following tips for better comparisons.
a. Visit the profiles of the competitor and check the type of posts shared by them.
b. Check the engagement on the posts based on reactions and comments.
c. Check whether your competitors run ads on FB, Google, YouTube, etc.

It is better to audit the profiles, pages, groups after a certain interval of time. It can be monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually. Just check the settings and the links you have added with all the channels are working fine or not. Any misinformation may create a negative impression on the users’ minds. Fix a date on your calendar and do the audit to make necessary corrections.

12. Embed your Facebook reviews on your website

Studies have found that: “Displaying 5 Star reviews on your website can increase your conversions by over 270%”. Use a white label reputation management platform to get more reviews, monitor your online reputation, and showcase your reviews on your website.

Final words

There is no end to learning and discovering social media lead generation strategies to build your business. If you have defined goals and plans, those will help you to complete the work efficiently. You can also get help from a social media proposal template to plan nicely. If you are thinking of implementing a social media marketing strategy to grow your business, the steps mentioned above will benefit you.

Benefits of using social media marketing