• 60% small businesses promote their business on social media.
• 50% focus on SEO and 35% use multi-channel marketing funnel.
• 70% small businesses consider content strategy as their primary marketing activity.
• 52% business owners are using social media as to efficiently address customer engagement.
• More than 20% of business owners said that they are making 50% plus profit using social media.

The primary reasons for the low turnout are uncertainty on an application of social media, calculating return on investment and persuade employees/stakeholders to clinch social media. Hence it is important to address the elephant in the room and analyze how beneficial is Social media for small businesses.

Social media for small businesses is a great way for emerging businesses to generate lead and build a reputation. If regularly updated, social media can deliver more results as compared to traditional mediums. Social media for small businesses gives brands an edge of control over the content that they want to post. Also, since social media is a two-way dialogue process, it helps businesses to instantly identify what is benefiting them. Social media for small businesses also helps generate Word of Mouth, which is one of the best tools for emerging businesses.

Social Media for small businesses | 10 Tips to effectively use Social Media

1. Define your Target Audience
The first and foremost important part that small businesses should focus on is to define their target audience. This helps small businesses to device their social media strategy accordingly. The target audience should be defined basis age group, sex, location, users’ online behaviors, their likes, interests, and preferences. For niche products, business owners can even target users based on their birthdays, anniversaries and important milestone. Audience targeting plays a very crucial role in the outcome of the results. For e.g.: a local shop selling footwear should not target users with interest in entertainment. The shop definitely won’t get the desired results.

2. Set achievable goals
Overnight success is a myth. Small businesses must understand this basic fact. Generally, when a new business starts selling on social media, there is palpable excitement is achieving more than set targeted sales. Businesses need to set goals which are upwards and forward. To achieve enormous goals, small businesses start updating social feed with multiple updates in shorter duration. This leads to user’s disinterest in the product/service. The set goals should be in sync with brand’s core capabilities and expertise. For e.g.: if a business is into selling shoes, they shouldn’t set a goal to repair maximum shoes in their area.

3. Choose the right medium
By now everyone knows, social media is for free. Even paid campaigns can be conducted at a relatively low cost as compared to traditional mediums. It is in this scenario, that we often see small businesses jumping the bandwagon and creating profiles on all the available platforms. Creating social profile doesn’t hamper brand image, but aggressively promoting a brand on wrong platforms can lead to brand losing its potential customers. Hence it is advisable for SME’s to first identify the right platform through which they can maximize their business. For e.g.: If a shoe selling brand tries to aggressively sell on LinkedIn, they won’t get a plausible response as compared to promotions on Facebook/Instagram.

4. Promote your core product/services
Since each and every business is riding in the social media wave, it is important for a them to promote their core product/services. Nowadays, we see a lot of businesses promoting their services as well as promoting peripheral products/services, which revolves around their core product/services. Majority of the times, this SME’s doesn’t have capabilities to fulfill a requirement, which can lead to a bad word of mouth for their business on social media platforms. Let us go back to our example; if a shoe seller is trying to aggressively promote socks instead of shoes, it is not going to benefit the business in the long run.

5. Create quality content
Now that we have covered the topics of identifying the target audience, setting achievable goals, choosing the right medium and promoting the right product/services let us now take a look at the type of content a business should promote on their social pages. A business should always focus on creating good quality content rather than not-good quantity content. Even if the business updates their page once in a day as long as it is relevant to their business, advocates about its core products send across a clear message it is considered as a good quality content. Antagonistically, if a business posts multiple updates which aren’t even relevant to the business’s products and services leads to users considering the business as fake/spam. Also, new businesses should try and refrain from promoting other businesses on their social platforms initially.

6. Create a content calendar
Making a small business successful on social platforms is no small task. It takes a lot of efforts for the businesses to keep up their conversion ratio. One such effort is to create a content calendar. Small businesses must anticipate important events and create a content calendar accordingly. Ideally, a content calendar must be planned a month in advance but an even weekly content calendar is highly recommended. This helps businesses to avoid any last minute hassles, strategize much more effectively and it also helps in creating curiosity amongst its loyal fans/customers.

7. Test and re-test
Social media is highly unpredictable. The content a business posts today, might not work for tomorrow. Hence, small businesses must always test their content before publishing it on their pages. Testing content also applies to the platform a small business chooses to promote. Small business owners must always don the consumer’s hat before posting about any product feature, updates, schemes or offers. A consumer’s perspective is the key when testing the content that has to be uploaded.

8. Look for inspiration
Small businesses must always look for inspiration from a competitor who is successful in the same category. Copy pasting competitors idea or content is not the answer. Small businesses must look for the kind of content its competitors are putting up and derive their own strategies subsequently. Inspiring content/stories always make a business to strive to create their own content that is appreciated by one and all. It helps in increasing brand consideration, brand visibility thereby increasing conversions for the business.

9. Calculate ROI
Even a small promotional budget is not justifiable if there is no mechanism to calculate its return on investment. It is more important in case of small businesses. It is very important for a small business to keep a tab on the budgets allocated to any promotions and the subsequent ROI related to it. If a certain promotion is not doing well or the business is not getting desired results, the brand custodian can always look for other platforms to generate quality conversions.

10. Analyze and Re-strategize
There can be umpteen instances where a particular campaign/promotion might not work for a business. That doesn’t mean that the promotion is wrong or the product/service is not good. Doing an analysis of the campaign is as important as setting the objective. This helps the business to formulate their upcoming strategies in more effective ways. At the end of every campaign, brands must note down the learning’s from that campaign and identify if the content/idea was appreciated by their fans or not. This helps businesses to skip the non-performing updates from future communications.

Final Thoughts
Social media for small businesses is definitely beneficial and fruitful. If followed correctly, small businesses can benefit tremendously from the power of social media promotions.

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The Voicemail Message

Recently, I had the experience of shopping for a car. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the pleasure of buying one. Although I knew the exact car I wanted and was ready to buy, not one car salesperson was willing to give me any personal attention. To begin, I followed a “get a quote” tool that was available online and filled in exactly what I wanted in my next car: the type, the color, the features, and even additional comments. I couldn’t have made it much easier for a car salesperson to sell me a car that I already knew I wanted.

With the five requests that I sent online to different car dealerships in my area, I received five phone calls within 12 hours of my request. All of them went directly to my voicemail. Here is the basic script to four of the messages I received: “Hello, this is (insert name of salesperson) calling from (insert name of car dealership). Please call me back at (insert telephone number that I have yet to call).

BOOORING! And talk about impersonal! Did they even read my request? Do they even know what kind of car I am interested in? When a prospect goes out of their way to contact you in regards to a sale, the last thing you want to do is leave them an impersonal or automated message!

What’s the purpose of a voicemail message?

There is only one objective to leaving a voicemail: get them to call you back. Be creative! Use humor! Show them you are different from the competition! Distinguishing yourself from others DOES NOT mean telling your prospects how great and wonderful you and your company are. DON’T tell them that your company is the biggest, the best, that it always puts the customer first, has a 99.6 percent customer satisfaction rate, was the first to do something, or how long you’ve been in business and how many awards your company has won. In fact, don’t tell them ANYTHING remotely similar to anything on that list!

How do you differentiate yourself from the competition?

Your prospects know what they like and what they want. They don’t want to dance around with you or play games. They want to be treated like an important customer and not like the next sale towards quota. So try leaving a message that is actually to the point. Try to sound like a human being and not a salesperson. Leave a message of value, where you tell your prospect something they might actually want to know. This will entice them to return your call.

The Email message

After sending in my online quote requests for a car, I also received an automated e-mail. I know that you’ve probably received one sometime in your life, too. They’re easy to spot as soon as you open the message: a letter full of misspellings, asterisks and exclamation points; sent from a nameless person promising to give you an incredible deal on a sale. These types of e-mails almost always end up in the trash folder. Why? Because they’re garbage, and you know it!

So, why are you using this garbage to reach your prospects? Voicemails and e-mails should always be sent personally from a real human being, with the intention of creating a relationship with your prospect. Get to know your prospect so you will understand them and discover their motivation for their interest. When you know why they are interested, you will find out how they will make the decision of whether or nor to buy from you.

Be persistent!

Although all five dealerships reached out to me within the first 24 hours of my inquiry, not one person has followed up with me since then (with the exception of automated e-mail blasts, like I mentioned). A clear and simple way to separate yourself from the competition is to be pleasantly persistent with your follow-up. You are NOT creating a favorable impression with a prospect if you can’t take the time to contact them on a personal level after your first attempt.

When I sent out my initial online inquiries, I was ready to buy a car. I took the first step to contact five different car dealerships in my area. However, the impersonal and ineffective follow-ups of these dealerships have reminded me of why I don’t like purchasing a car, and now I am considering keeping my old one. I didn’t make the sales process difficult, the follow-up system of the car dealerships did!

So consider this: is your follow-up system killing your chance of making sales? Do you send messages to your prospects? Are they personal? Are they effective? Remember, the point of the follow-up is to establish a relationship that will eventually lead to a sale. So be personal, be persistent, and be happy you’re changing a prospect into a customer!

Are you interested in selling Verizon Wireless services? Call us at (855) SELL-VZW or fill out the form below.  We look forward to speaking with you soon!

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Rick Stapp shows Neil Farquharson how to register for MyConectUS.com.
 
3/29/2021: Agents of ConectUS are encouraged to register for MyConectUS.com our password-protected site with valuable information and educational content. This video shows our partners how to gain access.

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