You’ve spent years working for someone else and have saved up enough to quit. After your first week as a small business owner, you realize this is going to be a lot harder than you thought.
Before you quit and go back to a nine to five, consider how social media can help you grow your business. Then, you may be able to get the customers you need to stay afloat.
Read on to learn more.
Build a Community
One of the biggest reasons to use social media as a small business owner is to build a community. You can use your social media to grow a following of people who like you and what you do.
Then, you can get to know your potential customers and have them get to know you. As this happens, your followers may start to trust you and your business.
Building trust with your audience will allow you to sell to them much more easily. You won’t have to work as hard to convince them to buy from you instead of a competitor, and you can build customer loyalty to get even more sales.
Easy to Start
As a small business owner, you may not be able to invest in traditional types of marketing, such as TV or radio ads. Those can take a lot of time to create, and they take a lot of money to run.
However, using social media to market yourself is an excellent alternative and a smart business decision. You can sign up for a social media account within minutes and share your first post immediately.
Then, you’ll be able to develop a content calendar so that you can share killer content regularly. You don’t need a massive marketing budget or a team to work on your marketing strategy; all you need is a computer or smartphone and some content ideas.
Affordable
Along with being easy to start, social media marketing is relatively affordable. If you do all of the work yourself, you don’t need to spend a cent on digital marketing.
Some platforms, like Facebook, make it hard for business pages to reach a significant number of people. However, you can use hashtags on networks like Instagram or Twitter to reach people who don’t follow you.
So if you don’t want to spend money on ads, you don’t have to. But if you have a larger marketing budget, take advantage of ads to grow your reach while staying within your budget.
Scalable
Another benefit of social media is that you can easily scale your marketing strategy. For one, you can reach more people than you would with local marketing efforts, such as using radio ads.
The more eyes you get on your content, the more chances you’ll have to sell to people. You also have the ability to repurpose your content and share the same post on multiple platforms to support a growing social media presence.
Sure, you may need to restructure the content to work on networks like Instagram and TikTok. However, you don’t have to create separate posts from scratch to use on various social media sites.
Flexible
Another advantage of social media over other types of marketing is the flexibility. First, you can use as few or as many social networks as you want to market your business.
Think about your ideal customer and which platforms they use regularly. Then, you can set up a presence on each of those networks to reach your audience.
The flexibility is also nice because you can change up your strategy at any time. If something isn’t working the way you want, you can change it then, and you don’t have to wait for someone at a TV or radio station to approve your changes.
Operate a Sales Funnel
You can also build a sales funnel with social media and move people through the funnel. Use hashtags and other informational posts to build awareness around your brand and get people into the first step.
Then, you’ll want to use more educational content to move followers into the consideration stage. Follow it up with some direct promo to encourage people to convert and buy your product or book your service.
Of course, you can build a sales funnel using any type of marketing. However, using social media to get people into the funnel is an excellent way to grow that funnel and your business.
Increase Sales
When you let your sales funnel run on social media, you can use it to get more sales. If you only sell to people using your email lists or traditional ads, you can limit your reach significantly.
By adding a social network or two, you’ll be able to get more people into your funnel and to the conversion stage. Then, you may be able to trace a lot of sales back to your social media marketing strategy.
If you maintain a good presence, you can continue to market to your current customers. Not only can you get more new buyers, but you may make repeat sales.
Offer Customer Service
As a small business owner, you may not have a large team of customer service representatives. You probably don’t have the time to manage a phone line to help customers.
But customer service can make a huge difference in the success of your business. If you never offer customer service, you may discourage people from buying from you, and you can lose out on those potential sales.
Fortunately, social media is an excellent place to provide customer service. If a customer has a problem, ask them to send you a direct message on Instagram or Facebook.
Then, you’ll be able to resolve the issue as best as you can. And your customers may feel better about messaging you on a platform they already use, rather than a random chat platform you install on your website.
Will You Use Social Media as a Small Business Owner?
If you’re a small business owner, you probably have a lot on your plate. You have to work on your product or service, get customers, and help those customers if they have any issues.
Don’t forget that you also have to market your business in some way. Luckily, social media can be a great way to market your business and get more customers, so give it a shot to see how it can work for you.
Running a small business isn’t easy. Check out our business section for more tips and tricks.
