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What is “Social Media Marketing” for Local Business?

We all know what the term “social media” means, but what exactly is social media marketing for a local business and how can it increase YOUR business?

Social media marketing (SMM as we marketing nerds call it) for small business is a marketing strategy and process of using social media platforms to promote a business, its products and services, to build a community or brand, and ultimately drive traffic to the business and generate sales.

Or more simply stated, social media marketing is posting and advertising on social platforms to grow a business and sell its services and products.

Most importantly, social media marketing is a huge opportunity for all local businesses! Using social media correctly in your market niche is key to your company’s visibility and effectiveness for attracting new customers or clients!

These days there are a lot of social media platforms that allow businesses to post, promote and advertise, and more being developed all the time. It is an ever-changing and dynamic landscape of sites. Here’s a list of the most popular platforms available for promoting business currently:

There are many different types of content that can be produced on social media platforms with the intent of marketing a business. Social posts, paid ads, images and videos, audio, offers, virtual tours, events, contests, surveys and more can all be used in social media to promote a company and sales.

What can social media marketing do for your local focused business? A lot! There are many benefits of using social media marketing campaigns and strategies for small, local focused businesses. It’s not just for big business!

Having a robust and consistent social media presence on the platforms where your customers or potential clients spend time scrolling and swiping really helps to build your brand, increases awareness of your company, and showcases your products and services. When someone is looking for what you have, social media will help make them think of you first.

While direct advertising on social platforms will generate leads quickly, a comprehensive social media strategy utilizing the free parts of social media platforms for posting as well will also return good results by raising brand awareness and increasing conversion rates of people looking at your goods and services.

Relationship building is another very important aspect of social media marketing. Social media sites are the perfect medium for connecting with existing customers and potential new ones. Connected and engaged followers usually turn into loyal and repeat customers. Interacting with follower’s posts, responding to comments or questions, and generally just providing value for their wants or needs fosters good relationships and increases followers for your social sites.  There are many techniques for building relationships through social media for local businesses.

That’s the basics of social marketing, the most common platforms in use now, and a whole host of great reasons to leverage social to grow the reach of your local business.

If you’re ready to take a look at how social media marketing can help you meet your goals and increase sales, go to the bottom of this page for contact info, or reach out to us here for a completely free video audit of your market and competition, and a discussion about how we can help.

If you’d like to more information about the details of social media marketing, keep reading further for a walk-through of the basics and some training and tips on how it all works.

Some Basics About Social Media Marketing

Before rushing off and posting all over the internet, it would be wise to have a target to shoot for. Even though you may think you have a good read on the customer base of your business, finding the right group to focus your social efforts on can be a bit different. Failing to locate your target audience is like trying to grow your business with a blindfold on.

Research is key! Research your audience by frequenting social media sites where people interested in your products or services are spending time. Who are your potential customers? What are they looking for? How can your products and services satisfy their wants or meet their needs? Drill down on what their looking to buy or what problems they may need to be fixed. Give some thought to a couple of different groups; your current customers, and where you might find new customers.

Identify where your customers or clients are online. What online platforms does your market attract? Spend some time searching different social media sites in your market niche. Facebook groups, Instagram posts, LinkedIn experts, and more have very different audiences. You could produce the most effective offer or ad that your market has ever seen, but if it’s posted on a site where none of your potential market is looking, it’s all for nothing! Find where your audience is, and post and advertise there.

What social media sites would people be investigating, considering, discussing, or looking to buy your products and services? Most marketers or business owners don’t put enough effort into researching where to spend ad dollars and cultivate new business. If you put in the extra effort (or hire someone like me to do it for you), it will pay off big when the results of your campaigns start coming in. Let’s go dominate your market niche in social media and pull in new business that your competition won’t!

Research your competition. When beginning to implement social media marketing campaigns for a local business it’s a good idea to research the competition first. If you’ve been in your market niche for any length of time, you know the companies that you compete with. Check them out online! What are they doing for online marketing? Do they have a Facebook page or group? Are they interacting with people consistently and frequently? Are they posting regularly? Are they spending marketing dollars on paid ads? Identifying what they’re up to will give you some idea of what your company can do to compete for those potential customers. It is definitely worth the effort. If you reach out to me, I will do a free audit of your market niche competition and help you figure out what to do to increase your revenue and market share.

Create GOOD content. INCOME PRODUCING content. Producing any content on social media sites for your business is a good thing however, creating content that is designed to get exposure, pull viewers in, and cause them to contact you and buy your services or products, will produce a much higher return on your investment than just posting a bunch of random stuff. There are many types of content for marketing online. Websites, blog posts, pictures, videos, podcasts, virtual tours, surveys, contests and more are all effective online marketing tools. Picking the right ones for your market and having a sensible strategy are key to maximizing your returns.

I can tell you from experience that there is a lot of very poor content on social media sites for marketing local businesses. Usually, it’s just a business owner doing their best to build their brand or generate calls or leads, but sometimes it’s even produced by self-proclaimed digital marketing “experts.” A mixture of content, targeted to reach your market, with a message that attracts viewers and causes them to contact you for more information or to make a purchase, posted with a smart social media marketing plan, will produce very good results for almost any business. If you’re not experienced at social media marketing, consulting a professional is the first step to maximizing your marketing online.

Launch and don’t stop. After you have some content ideas and a strategy, it’s time to launch! I will tell you that it’s best to have a plan first, look long-term, and then post your content online frequently and consistently. Having said that, if you can’t get to that point right away, just start posting something relevant to your business! We can improve on it as you go. Digital marketing and social media marketing are not short-term, “one and done” plans. Post and keep posting! The more you post the better the results. You almost can’t post too much!

Check, analyze and adjust. Checking the results of your campaigns is so important. A lot of local businesses just post a bunch of stuff and think they’re done. An effective and productive social media marketing plan is only as good as its results. There are many ways to evaluate what’s working for your business. If you’re in a big ticket market like home remodeling or concrete contracting, your analysis could be as simple as noticing an increase in calls coming in for quotes. A clothing store may be able to judge results by noticing more likes or followers on its social media pages. Social media marketing professionals can provide much more detailed analysis of campaigns and how to make them produce better results. All market niches are unique. Whatever type of business you trade in, having at least some sort of method for being able to evaluate what works is a minimum. At Elevate Solutions Group we can provide anything from very specific analysis and reports to basic lead and call tracking. No matter what you do, we highly recommend that you do something to give you an idea of how well your marketing dollars are producing.