Aba Forson
Small business owners often depend on traditional advertising methods such as magazine ads, classified ads or posters that are pasted on the streets for their small business marketing efforts. Also, despite the frequent mentioning that social media marketing is the current big thing, small business owners tend to shrug the statement off, citing that they are not targeting the global audience, which is a reason that arises from misconception about social media marketing for small businesses.
I am very sure that there are some small business owners out there that are monitoring the trends of blogging and the growth of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook but they are doubting whether social media marketing is the type of marketing that will work for their businesses. In this social media marketing for small business article, I am going to share with you 3 reasons why you, as a business owner, should start to tap opportunities offered by these online social media platforms.
Get Closer with Your Target Market
First, let’s bust the “Internet is only for international companies” myth. The obvious truth is, more people, including those that are from your local community, are getting online. This means that it is very likely for them to look for a service provider or a product online. If you are able to get in front of their eyeballs during their search, provide the necessary assistance in the form of helpful content and build trust along the process, the likeliness of them doing business with you will be higher compared to a multinational company that often ignore small-sized customers or another local small business that fails to showcase their expertise.
Having an online presence also helps you to understand what the market is desperately looking for or things that they are hoping to get when dealing with your type of business. If you are the first to be able to satisfy their needs, they will definitely recommend your business to others and good words about your business will spread.
Death of Traditional Marketing
Traditional marketing such as newspaper ad or TV ad is dying. Ask anyone who has just finished reading the Wall Street Journal on whether they are going to take action based on the ads they saw. Most of them will find it hard to even recall what are the ads that really caught their attention.
As the attention span of modern day human beings are getting shorter, technologies such as ad blockers, RSS feed for news reading and TiVo for television programs provide users with the ability to skip ads. Compare this to social media marketing where you are going to interact with your prospects directly by providing valuable content rather than hard selling marketing messages, you are more than likely to get better response rates and results.
Building Trust and Loyalty
Value adding through relationship building and useful content creation can achieve more than just bridging the gap between you and your target market. As a small business owner, social media marketing can help you to establish trust and loyalty with community members that you are targeting. With the help of these social media tools, you are now able to track, participate and broadcast within a certain targeted community.
Trust and loyalty is crucial for a small business. Both the elements ensure repeat customers as well as the likelihood of them recommending you to others. By being helpful online irregardless of whether a person will form part of your customer base will definitely contribute towards trust and loyalty building.
If you are eager to add social media marketing to your small business marketing portfolio but not sure where to start, be sure to click on social media marketing now to get a FREE article covering social media marketing errors that you should avoid.
Despite the buzz that you have been seeing, the growth of social media is certainly not at its peak yet so jump in before your competitors do.
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