Social Media Marketing Strategy For Small Businesses

Here’s a real fact: owning a small business is a great accomplishment, but sometimes it gets complicated to manage everything.

To run your business like a pro, you have to create an engaging social media marketing strategy and let people know you’re in town, ready to provide them with the best services ever.

Why social media? Because worldwide, every second, 11 people use social media for the first time. According to BroadBand Search, in 2020, approximately 4 million people were using social media. That’s more than half of the globe’s population!

In this article, you will find valuable social media marketing insight that will successfully help you promote your business.

Are you ready to let people know you’re offering high-quality services or experience? If you’re up for the challenge, here we are to help. Find out how to create the most effective social media marketing strategy for your small business by following just a few strategic steps.

1. Use Marketing Messages

By using a scheduling app that can send mass messages to clients, you can easily send a bulk text message and invite them to follow you on social media. This way, you’ll create engagement with your exact target audience and you’ll be able to educate them and give them the information they need to hear.

You can download such an app for free in the App Store or Google Play. Gain precious time and forget about texting each client individually.

2. Set Realistic Social Media Marketing Goals

When you decide to invest time and effort into stepping up your marketing game online to achieve some specific results, you should first set your goals, meaning to know what results you want to get.

Goals are great because they keep you accountable. Your social media goals should always be aligned with your overall business objectives.

For example, as a small business owner, your goals could look like this: grow the brand, create awareness, capture attention, increase interaction and engagement, drive leads and sales, increase conversions, improve customer retention & earn referrals from customers.

While setting your goals, all you have to do is establish “SMART objectives,” and to do so, you need to measure the social awareness raised, in the number of followers and shares, for example. So think about it and write down social media objectives for your small business which are: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Here are some guidelines to keep in mind as you set your SMART goals. Don’t forget that to design a great social media marketing strategy, starting with SMART goals is an essential step.

3. Know Your Business Audience

You’re permanently establishing relationships with your existing and potential clients, and knowing as much as possible about them is fundamental.

It will be best to create what marketers call a “buyer’s persona.” That’s a fancier term to describe your client’s profile and the audience you’re trying to reach.

For example, you’re a hairstylist, and you realize that most of your clients are millennials who are willing to try all kinds of crazy hairstyles and colors on their hair. You also notice a pattern that most of the women coming to your salon have college degrees and well-paid jobs.

Facebook Insights is the tool you should use to find out useful information about your followers. There’s some valuable information that the analytics tool of Facebook can reveal.

If you’re new to social media or have a social media business page, you can find some tips about how to use it:

4. Analyze Your Competitors

Yes, you do need to know what your competition is up to. And before that, you need to be aware of who your competitors are.

That is something you can pretty easily solve thanks to our Google-friend. Search for your business-related words. For example, hair stylists in San Francisco CA, barbershops in Detroit MI, lash artists in Dallas TX, Pet Groomers in Washington DC, fitness trainers in Phoenix AZ, etc. and see what the results are.

According to traditional marketing, if you’re a hairstylist, your direct competitors would be another hair salon, probably located two-three blocks away. It’s probably not fun for you to be located close to your competition as a physical location, but as long as you do a great job, providing excellent services, there are enough clients out there. The only thing is to make sure they know you’re there doing a great job. 🙂

Searching for your competitors will provide you with much useful information, helping you decide your own social media strategy. For example, check out how many followers the top hairstylists in your area have, who their clients are, how much engagement they have on their page, the type of their content, etc. Are they funny and cozy, or more formal? What kind of pictures do they post? With what frequency? These are just a few things you should focus on while making the social media marketing strategy for your small business. 🙂

5. Choose Your Social Media Channels

There is a trap when you decide to use social media marketing, and then you want to have all the social media channels possible. While that would be a great thing, always remember that your main business is to provide quality services.

As great it would be to have seven different social media channels, you might not have enough spare time to keep up with everything, updating Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linked In, Youtube, Pinterest, Reddit, etc.

If you’re starting to use a social media marketing strategy, you should probably start with one channel. Facebook would be the most obvious, as it is still the most popular social media platform globally. That’s the leading platform where small businesses can have a voice.

Nevertheless, though, in the last few years, Instagram has become incredibly relevant. According to statistics, 50% of Instagrammers follow at least one brand on the platform, while 75% of those Instagrammers will take action on a call to action (such as going to a website) after reading an Instagram post.

Now that you know exactly where you should be visible, keep reading and find out what kind of content you should post, how often, and how to see if it works. Ready? 🙂

6. Create Useful Content

According to Squared Online Group 3, here’s where customer needs and business needs meet: content.

You want to connect with your potential clients on social media, right? The question is how to make your social media content, both exciting and interactive for them.

There are four important purposes a social media marketing strategy has, and those are: entertain, inspire, educate, and convince. It’s important to know that each of these four purposes can be met through different types of content.

The content shared on your social media channels should be highly visual and attractive. Post pictures of your work, for example, “before and after ” pictures of your clients’ hair. These photos show your work expertise, ingenuity and they tell stories about your talent and professionalism. Another great idea might be to post some business tips, “how to-s,” and let other beginners in your industry learn something from you.

One last quick thing here, make sure the wonderful photos you post on your social media channels have a good, interesting, short, and Grammarly correct text to go with them. If you have a “book now” button active on your social media profile, I swear there’s no client who can resist to booking an appointment with you! Here’s an article on how you can set up your online booking system and to activate your booking button on Facebook and Instagram. 

7. Choose Your Best Time To Post

Knowing what kind of content to post on social media to promote your business is half the battle.

While creating a social media marketing strategy, an essential element you should consider is the date and time you schedule your posts.

Now, think about yourself. When do you use your phone the most? Is it in the morning, when you drink your coffee, at lunch break, in the evening, or when you go to bed and enjoy scrolling for a little while?

According to a social media study, the best time to post on Facebook would be mid-week. Wednesday is considered the most productive day for posting, with the best time being around lunch break.

Of course, people use apps in different ways and at different times, so you’d better read more about the best time to post on social media according to each of the apps.

Last but not least, don’t forget to consider the time zone. If your audience is from your country, lucky you, but if you’re addressing people from another country, make sure you schedule your posts at the ideal time to post on social media in that country.

Don’t panic. I found you a link that shows the world clock worldwide. Or, if you want to choose an easier way to see the time zone from different countries, iPhones display in the Weather app the time zone for each country you select. Information is just one tap away from us; the important part is to know where to search for it. 🙂

8. Measure Your Results

This is what marketers call “marketing effectiveness.” Measuring your social media marketing success is very important. Only by seeing what worked and what didn’t you know what you need to change in your social media marketing strategy.

The social media goals we talked about at the beginning of this article can and should be measured if you want to make sure that you didn’t invest efforts without results.

The first and most important thing to do is to measure your income. If your sales grow, your strategy works. Easy, isn’t it? But you need to calculate exactly that income. The best way to do that is by using an app with revenue reports. Check out how you can be even more in control of your business with reports. Goldie, an appointment scheduling app for small businesses, thought about this solution for professionals, and I find it really cool. You can download it to check it for yourself.

Another way to measure your results is the audience statistics on your social media platforms. They quickly show you which posts had an impact and which didn’t, what worked or not on your profile, and the average effect on your profile. For Facebook, you’ll find this feature in the Insights tab. In Twitter, you have to search for it in Twitter Analytics. You’ll need to have a business account on Instagram before you can see your data and statistics.

In conclusion…

I know it’s not always easy to run a small business but think about your social media marketing strategy, and that implementing it correctly could have a very significant impact on your small business.

Now you know that a well-implemented social media marketing strategy can bring a ton of new opportunities to your business. It will help you differentiate your business from competitors, putting it ahead of the pack with something unique. Isn’t that what you want? 🙂