As the owner of a small business or a fresh new start-up, you likely know that it’s important for your business to be active on social media.
But, do you know why your small business needs social media marketing?
There are many benefits of using social media for small businesses. Yet many small business owners believe that they are too small for social media. They believe social media is best left for the ‘big players’ with even bigger budgets; the companies that can afford to have a marketing team, run large-scale social media campaigns, and rack up hundreds of thousands of followers.
We’re here to bust those social media myths. Your business belongs on social media. And in this article, we’ll be sharing seven reasons why small businesses need social media marketing.
7 reasons why small businesses need social media marketing
Social media is about so much more than cute cat pics, posting a link to your online shop, using hashtags or showing up once every blue moon.
The businesses that win at social media are the ones that show up consistently and have a dedicated social media strategy. The best part is, you don’t need to have a four-figure marketing budget to achieve these things. You, as a solo entrepreneur, can win on social media.
You should have to show up consistently and keep doing the work. With the right social media training, you will soon have the confidence to manage social media for your business and turn your audience into customers.
If you’ve been sleeping on social media, take this article as your alarm clock screaming at you to wake up.
Some of the reasons why small businesses need social media marketing include:
- Build brand awareness and reputation
- Increase website traffic
- Act as a portfolio for your business
- Nurture your community
- Demonstrate social proofing for your brand
- Increase sales and conversions
- Deliver glowing customer service
Let’s look at each of these social media marketing benefits in more detail below so you can see exactly what your business can gain from investing in social media.
Build brand awareness and reputation
If nobody knows about your brand, how can they buy from you?
There are over 4.48 billion social media users around the world. That’s almost 57 percent of the entire global population!
Social media marketing is great for generating noise about your business. Social media is essentially digital word-of-mouth for your business. As a result, it is a powerful way to increase brand awareness and develop your reputation as a brand.
Whether it’s someone else posting about your brand on their social media channel, resharing your posts, or you showcasing the powers of your products/services on your social media pages – Social media marketing can expand your reach and shine a light on your business.
Increase website traffic
Both organic and paid social media marketing campaigns are key for driving traffic to your website. As a business owner, you want people to be visiting your website from various sources.
Relying on only one source can be detrimental to your business. So, it’s important to consider how you can use social media to increase website traffic.
Some easy ways you can drive more traffic to your website is to reshare your blog content to your social media posts, include your website URL in your social media bio, or direct people to landing pages where they can learn more about your products/services.
Sending social media traffic to your website also increases your chance of turning those visitors into customers. It’s a win-win situation.
With that said, you don’t want to just coldly self-promote your website at any given opportunity. If anything, this will have the reverse effect and will turn people away from your brand. Instead, think about the ways that you can add value to your social media audience. Providing value to your audience will indirectly encourage them to visit your website for more information.
Act as a portfolio for your business
Ever wished you had a way to showcase your results as a business? Well, social media marketing lets you do just that!
Whenever working with clients on social media marketing, we always encourage them to view their social media accounts as the portfolio for their business.
Small businesses can use social media to show off everything they can do as a business. From local restaurants to eCommerce stores, SaaS tools, accountants and beyond, you can use social media to demonstrate the powers of your business.
For example, a restaurant may share food photos of their current menu to visually show off their delicious menu. An accountant might share case studies that show how they’ve previously helped other businesses save money on their tax bill or they might want to share advice that demonstrates their expertise as an accountant.
Social media is your opportunity to be loud and proud about all that you have achieved, all that you know and all that you can offer for your customers. Share your awards, show off your recent work and shout about your expertise.
If you aren’t showing off your results as a business owner, how will anyone else know what you are capable of?
Nurture your community
Small businesses can also use social media marketing to build, nurture, grow and sustain meaningful connections with their customers.
Building a community takes both time and hard work. But it’s worth it to see your community flourish.
As a business owner, nurturing a community helps you to develop a loyal tribe of brand ambassadors who love and support your business — this tribe will be more likely to recommend your brand to friends and they’ll be more likely to be a life-long customer.
You can leverage social media to nurture your community by creating community-focused content. This could be engaging content that encourages your community to interact with your social media posts. It could be creating and maintaining an exclusive Facebook group for your community.
Community-focused social media content could also be resharing user-generated content, having a brand hashtag that you encourage the community to share or offering incentives for users that interact with your brand on social media.
Nurturing a community can be beneficial for your business in numerous ways. Not only does it improve the number of life-long customers your brand has, it also gives you access to a group of customers that can be used for market research or gathering feedback on your current products/services.
One example of a company with a loyal community is the clothing brand, Black Milk.
Black Milk have amassed a loyal fan base named Sharkies – these fans are more likely to shop with Black Milk, share the brand on social media, and interact with one another through social media to further nurture the community. To Sharkies, Black Milk is more than a clothing brand. It’s a part of their identity and other Sharkies are considered their family.
Demonstrate social proof for your brand
Social proof is a type of social influence that suggests that people will conform in order to be liked or accepted by the influencer.
Small businesses can leverage social media as social proof for their brand. This can be done through sharing testimonials, diving into a client case study, or showing other people using their products/services.
Influencer campaigns are a great way to generate social proof for your brand on social media. Seeing valued and trusted influencers use and recommend a brand can encourage other people to also try the brand. Social proof builds trust and evokes positive emotions in potential customers.
Social proof should form a central part of any small business’s marketing strategy and social media is just one way that you can do that.
Increase sales and conversions
No matter what your goals are as a business owner, increasing revenue will always be a priority. Having a positive bottom line is crucial for the long-term success of your business.
Social media marketing is just one of the activities you can invest in to increase your business sales and conversions. When done correctly, the ROI of social media can be lucrative.
In order to increase sales and conversions through social media, it helps to have a detailed social media strategy. If you’re social media savvy, you can do this yourself. But, it always helps to have a social media professional help you create a strategic social media plan and implement it in the right way.
At Fika Digital, we can help you create a purposeful social media strategy that is developed with both your audience and your goals in mind. This strategy will be tailored specifically to your business needs (and wants!) to make sure you are getting exactly what you want out of your social media marketing.
Some ways that you can use social media to increase conversions include:
- Adding a strong call to action to your social media posts, bio and/or header image
- Running exclusive social media webinars (think Instagram Live) as a way to pre-sell a product/service and pitch your products/services
- Make use of the Shop features on Facebook and Instagram if you have an eCommerce business
- Use Paid social media to promote your products/services or for lead generation purposes
These suggestions are just the tip of the iceberg. There are a myriad of subtle and not-so-subtle ways you can increase sales through your social media marketing.
Deliver glowing customer service
Last but not least, social media offers your business an opportunity to deliver glowing customer service.
These days, customers have come to expect brands to answer their customer requests, complaints and queries through social media.
Many companies have even created secondary customer service accounts on Twitter to help them support their customers with their queries.
Take Gymshark for example. They have a Twitter account dedicated to all-things Gymshark. Then they have a secondary Twitter account named “Gymshark_Help” where they proactively help customers.
Sometimes, they will respond to customer concerns that tag “@Gymshark_Help” or mention Gymshark. Other times, they’ll engage in conversation with customers on Twitter.
Investing in customer service can help you build meaningful relationships between your company and your customers. Social media can be the perfect place to offer customer service support as it allows your company to offer instantaneous support and, in turn, receive instantaneous customer feedback and interaction.
We recommend having separate teams for your social media marketing and customer service. There is a big difference between the two roles and they can both be really demanding. If you do have two separate teams, make sure they have a strong, open communication line so that they can work together to deliver a glowing customer experience for all of your customers and fans on social media.
Benefits of social media for small businesses: Final thoughts
It’s evident that there are a lot of benefits of using social media for small businesses.
Above, we’ve shared just seven reasons why small businesses need social media marketing. Outside of these seven reasons, there’s also the benefit of social media being a cost-effective marketing channel, creating conversation around your brand, using social media insights to further improve your business, telling and strengthening your brand story… and so much more.
If you are interested in honing your social media skills, we offer bespoke social media training and workshops to help you boost your social media knowledge so you can confidently manage your own channels.
It’s time for you to embrace the powers of social media marketing!
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