If you are a business owner, chances are you spend a significant amount of time looking for the best opportunities to promote your business. While SEO and PPC are on everyone’s list, many tend to ignore or even forget social media marketing.
Social media is one of the best platforms to advertise and promote your brand, products or services, etc. as it has a wide audience. As of 2022, nearly 4.55 billion users are actively using different social media platforms globally; this means that over 57% of the global population has access to various social media sites. If you are not focusing on tending to the huge audience on social media, you are missing out on a huge chunk of potential customers. Planned and effective social media advertising can make your social media campaigns successful.
On average Facebook, the most popular social media platform has users clicking on 12 ads in a month. There are various social media platforms suitable for different campaigns and provide many types of advertising services & facilities. No doubt that social media platforms can help in the growth of your local business much faster than traditional marketing methods. Nowadays, search engines, as well as social media platforms, provide many features for the marketing of products or services that help local businesses increase their revenue. It is not wrong to say that social media advertising is the best form of advertisement for businesses and brands of all types. In this blog, we will discuss social media marketing strategy, how social media is helpful in the growth of local businesses and what strategies to follow to appear in local search rankings of social media platforms? etc.
What is Social media marketing?
Social media marketing is the form of digital marketing in which you can run ads, promote your business, build campaigns, etc., by creating social media posts on social platforms. Some popular of popular social media sites are Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, Whatsapp, etc. Nowadays, social media is one of the best methods to promote your local businesses and appear in the local search rankings of these platforms. Social media advertising is a far better and more effective form of advertising than the traditional method. Local businesses need visibility to reach customers that are living in their area of service. For this purpose, you have to do social media optimization targeting local customers that may be interested in your business. Although social media sites have no impact on SEO rankings but they can indirectly help in driving traffic to your website and increasing the clickthrough rate (CTR) which ultimately leads to a better ranking on the search engine results page. It can also strengthen your social media marketing strategy and help to appear in the news feed of local customers.
How social media marketing helps in the growth of local businesses
Social media platforms are the best to run advertisements as it gives a better return on investment (ROI) on your spending. Engagement time on social media is growing day by day. Local businesses can use it to grow their business faster than any other means of advertising because social media users spend an enormous amount of time on these platforms. According to Forbes, an average American user spent more than 1300 hours on social media in 2020. It also helps understand users’ behavior and recent trends that help influence your customers and appear in local search rankings.
- Easy to reach users – Social media platforms are easy to use that’s why there are billions of users using them. For local businesses, reaching customers or getting in touch with them is the most challenging and essential task. You can easily reach your customers and describe the features & services of your business through optimized social media posts. Creating posts according to the business’s targeted audience can help you find your potential customers. With the help of social media advertising, you can communicate to a large audience at a time and describe your business’s offers most effectively. It makes it easy for you to reach users and convert them into your potential customers.
- Cost-effective – Advertisement is one of the most important methods that businesses use to reach more customers. Running ads is not easy, it requires a plan and strategy for the successful implementation of it. Also, it requires a lot of capital. But with the help of social media marketing, you can plan and execute your ads campaign in a very cost-efficient manner. A powerful social media marketing strategy is very useful for local businesses to grow their business on a limited budget. There are other facilities where you can track the impact of your advertisement, its performance like customer reach, social media engagement rate, conversion rate, etc. You can also run ads according to your business need as what type of customers you want to target, specific location (mainly for local businesses), specific time to trigger your ads, set the cost of your advertising campaign, etc.
- Understanding users’ behavior – Social media is the best platform for understanding your user’s behavior and search intent. This is a vital task for local businesses. Optimizing your content or social media posts according to your targeted audience helps you rank in the local search rankings and indirectly enhances your website’s appearance in the local SEO. You can run contests for social media audiences with small gifting to engage more users. Also, creating polls, filling out forms, playing games, etc., can be used to engage more users and analyze their behavior & search intent.
- Free reach to the mass audience – Social media marketing is popular because of its large audience base. This is an excellent opportunity for local businesses to find their potential customers with the help of effective social media optimization. Though social media is not a search ranking factor, it helps a lot in attracting and engaging customers at zero cost. Also, optimizing your content and post to appear in local search rankings or in the news feed of local users can boost your social media marketing strategy.
- Remarketing products or services – Social media platforms are heavily used in remarketing products and services. Remarketing is getting in touch with the users that have potential chances of taking the intended action based on previous search queries. It proved to be an effective marketing strategy. Suppose customers visit your website and enquire about specific products or services and leave your site. In this condition, you can show ads to customers for the product they inquired about or other similar products that might be useful for them describing its features, offers & discounts in their news feed section. This remarketing strategy is very popular these days and effective also. You can also ask for suggestions and feedback from customers to improve your product or services.
- Easy promotion – Local businesses often face problems with how to promote their products on a limited budget. Planned social media campaigns can solve this issue. Social media platforms are the one-stop destination for both users and business owners. About 81% of people use Instagram to research products or services for shopping.
You can focus on your social media optimization strategy or use paid services offered by social media platforms for the promotion of new and highlighted products. You can also track the performance of your ads with the tools provided by these sites. Effective social media strategy can enhance your brand appearance, drive sales & leads, etc.
Social media marketing strategy
- Give offers & discounts – Customers like discounts and offers on their purchases. Almost every brand or industry uses this strategy to engage and attract customers. This is a very effective method that is directly related to the sales figure of the business. Local business owners can also offer discounts to their customers that grab the attention of new users and engage with the existing ones. Offering discounts & deals and promoting them on social media can be easy with the help of social media posts. Other tempting methods that are very popular these days and you can also provide your customers are pay later schemes, gift coupons, referral programs, etc. The quick benefits of these techniques include the promotion of new products & services, driving sales quickly, rapid increase in the social media engagement rate, etc. But offers & discounts should be given in such a way that you do not suffer a loss. There must be a planned way to implement these discounts for a certain period of time.
- Ask for ratings & reviews – Ratings & reviews clearly show the picture of what users think about your business, services or products. 80% of customers consider online reviews before shopping. Try to get reviews from customers and respond to them, especially in the case of a bad review as people expect it. Nearly 80% of Twitter users feel positive about a business when they get a response to their tweet. 62% of customers will write a review for you if asked, so don’t hesitate. You can ask for a review via emails, DMs, posts, or in person. Also, keep watching what customers are talking about your business in the comment box of social media platforms. If there is a negative discussion, try to improve it and let customers know that you solved the particular issue.
- Regularly add posts – Social media is a vast platform and keeps updating regularly. Most local businesses make the mistake that they create a profile on social media and do not update them. But it would help if you were careful about these things to maintain your social media engagement. Add posts regularly on your social media profile so that users and social media sites know that you are active in your business. Posts should be created according to your targeted audience. You need to update your social media profile for every change in your business, like contact number, timings, location, photos or any important update, so that customers get accurate information about your business.
- Respectful language – It is essential to communicate with your audience in a language that shows humbleness and gratitude towards your customers. You should avoid using language that hurts your customer’s emotion, even in the case of a negative review, as it affects other customers too. Always use words that show that you are trying to improve your services. You should not use casual language or put jokes while communicating with customers. Also, always use positive emojis relevant to your business and customers.
- Engage customers with good content and hashtags – Great and unique content is a vital thing for businesses of any kind. Focus on content in your post & business’s website and try to improve its quality. One of the most popular methods to engage with customers and make your social media advertising campaign effective is hashtags(#). Do some hashtags research and use them frequently in your social media posts relevant to your business. You can also create some unique hashtags for your business.
- Know your target audience – One of the most critical factors of your social media campaigns is to identify the business’s targeted audience and related information. Whether local or global, any type of business cannot be successful without doing deep research. You should focus on conducting a target audience research and collecting information like which social media platform they are using the most, the time slot in which your audience is active, their age group, etc. Any business owner should have proper knowledge of their target audience as a part of an effective social media marketing strategy.
- Run social media contests – Running effective and engaging contests on social media is an excellent strategy to increase the social media engagement rate. Contests must be related to your business, services or products that create brand awareness among users. You should share the link to these contests so that more and more users participate. You can also include small prizes to attract audiences. Creating and sharing some informational posts and infographics add value to users’ knowledge. Polls on social subjects, Q&A sections, creative videos, etc., can also be used to increase the effectiveness of your social media optimization.
Final thoughts
We’ve learned above that social media has no direct effect on enhancing local SEO, but it is the best platform for promotional purposes and running advertisements. The presence of local businesses on these platforms is essential for reaching new customers and staying connected with the existing ones. Almost all social media sites provide services for running ads which include free facilities or paid ones. You can use them to maximize your performance, but this needs planning and strategy to get more benefit in less spending. For this purpose, you can take help from an SEO company or SEO expert that provides SMO services, local SEO services, etc.
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