How Can Social Media Marketing Help Small Businesses?

Individuals & personal brands are likely the easiest form. Essentially, you are marketing to your friends, family, and other like-minded people who believe in your vision, brand, product, service or whatever it may be you publish via the social media platforms. Your audience is easily captured and engaged as they already have a vested interest in you and your message.

Smack dab in the middle of these two categories is the small businesses. If successful, the business is large enough that it has lost that personal feeling that allows a personal brand strategy to be effective, yet the firm is not large enough to afford the large team of talented people and budget to reach the scalability of a large corporation. To put it in simpler terms the business has lost the sexy, niche, rooting for the underdog, start up appeal of a personal brand, but does not have the size to ‘brand’ effectively and naturally stand out from a crowded field of competitors.  

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is hard, and being a small business can often magnify this problem 10x based on the constraints for most firms this size. As a small business owner, or small business manager, time is your most valuable asset. Often the business owner or manager spends their time on pressing issues that seem to creep into everyday.  Perhaps this is putting out operational fires that occur day-to-day, becoming caught up in personnel issues, or dealing with the ever growing burden of federal, state, and local government regulation or agencies that impact small business on a seemingly never-ending basis. Typically we end up seeing people working “in” their business, instead of “on” their business but it is because of business owners getting too busy.

When small businesses get busy, marketing, especially social media marketing, and advertising are the first tasks to be eliminated. However, ‘busy’ is the time you need marketing and advertising the most. As your business grows, often does your payroll, necessary supply requirements, and other general costs of doing business. While we all welcome the increase in the top line, once this begins we have, as small business owners and social media marketers, to immediately begin sprinting to make this level of performance the new normal. Once the snowball starts rolling, it gets bigger and bigger. Your job as the entrepreneur and/or marketer is to make sure there is always enough hill to roll down and no big trees in the way. 

First, people don’t buy products or services.  People buy people. In 2020, there are enough large corporations and huge franchises that easily come to mind for almost anything a consumer may need.  Tell your customers why they should choose you. A few reasons may include the fact that you are local to their community, perhaps you live in the same town or neighboring city.  Your firm is big enough to provide the customer the service or product they need, but still small enough to provide the peace of mind knowing the owner will be involved and accessible throughout the process.   

You’re involved in the community. Your children go to the same schools, play on the same teams. Your social media profile and Social Media Marketing strategy doesn’t need to always be an advertisement. In fact, most often it shouldn’t be. Post a picture of the little league team your business sponsored over the summer.  Share a video of you or your employees volunteering for a local cause. 

To provide a real life example, one of our clients, were able to utilize their large truck to help a woman battling cancer move a basketball hoop from one location to another for her children. This task was organized via a local charity, Stomp the Monster (stompthemonster.org) through a local Facebook group. After completing the task, our client received a glowing post of appreciation via Stomp the Monster, which they were able to share with their local friends, family and followers. Obviously our client did not do this for recognition or gratitude, they did it because they thought it was the correct thing to do, however it did end up working as a great Social Media Marketing tool.

People do not often engage with advertisements or commercials.  People engage with stories. Do you have a funny story from earlier in the day that others might relate to?  Post it, share it. Write it down, attach a photo or two. Better yet, record what you can. Videography and video sharing is a growing trend in social media marketing right now.  Do not be afraid to put yourself out there, be the face of your company. You are what your customers want. Everyone wants to talk to the boss, everyone who is considering utilizing your offering is yearning to learn more about you. In the current digital marketing age, no one makes a hiring or purchasing decision without a quick Google search, Facebook review or Instagram scroll. 

Steve’s insight is exactly the type of mentality you need to have when you are looking to promote your small business. You are a small business, not a big business (at least not yet), you need to recognize your strength. Share your stories, demonstrate why you are different and who you are through social media marketing.

 What may seem like a minutiae to you, may be a big question or someone not familiar with your craft. Think about that. As entrepreneurs, business owners, business managers, people who have to make decisions on a daily basis, how many questions do you struggle with?  No need to answer, we know the answer. Create content, publish videos, write a blog or film a vlog, the secret is to do it consistently and thoughtfully utilize social media marketing. If you can do that great, if you can’t do that, find someone who can. Your customers want to hear from you, they want to know you, and most importantly they would like to spend money with you, give them a reason, or better yet, give them hundreds of reasons. Each post, share, like, tutorial, PSA, sponsorship and good deed helps!