Starting a business can be expensive, and your advertising budget may be small until you start bringing in more revenue. Often small business owners wonder how they can even afford to promote their businesses. The good news is that there are affordable digital marketing solutions, especially with the help of social media. Here’s how to make the most of social media marketing and advertising for your business.
How many people do you know who use social media and search engines every day? Actually, it may be easier to list anyone you know who doesn’t use this technology. And with that, here are some ways to make the most out of social media marketing and digital advertising for your business.
How to Use Social Media Marketing for Your Business
Depending on your industry, there are a variety of social media platforms that can assist you in getting the word out about your brand. Such platforms include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Snapchat.
Choose your social media platforms carefully based on your target market. B2B companies are wise to set up a LinkedIn page for their company while those who are targeting an older crowd could greatly benefit from using Twitter and Facebook to market their brands. If your target market consists of Millennials or younger generations, Instagram and Snapchat are wonderful marketing tools as well.
Each platform has different capabilities and advertising options. Facebook is great for targeting a wide range of specific audiences with images, blogs, visual stories, and messaging. Instagram and Snapchat are wonderful for creating visual stories and showcasing images. Tweets are ideal for short and to the point messages, while LinkedIn posts can run the length of an entire blog.
Cater your content to both your target audience and platform, and when needed you can run paid ads on each platform to reach viewers outside of your followers, friends, and connections.
Other options for marketing your small business over social media include using hashtags on Instagram and Twitter, joining relevant Facebook groups to share your content with, showcasing your skills and sharing information on YouTube, and posting your blogs on LinkedIn and Facebook.
Social media influencers are another option for gaining exposure for less than the cost of a print ad. If an influencer has over 10,000 followers from your target market, you can pay them to post content featuring your products or services.
How to Use Digital Advertising for Your Business
There are several digital advertising options like Google AdWords that can reach your target audience for less than the cost of a print campaign.
Other options include starting a blog, boosting your SEO to rank higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs), collaborating with influential bloggers, donating products or services to charity, claiming local listings on Google Places, Yahoo Local, and Bing Local, offering Groupon or Living Social deals, and starting affiliate programs with popular websites using banner ads.
It may also help to publish articles on popular websites visited by your target audience and using community sites and public directories to make your business known.
The ultimate goal for every small business is building brand recognition and increasing profits. This is made easier through digital exposure, especially the use of social media marketing. If you aren’t sure where to start or are interested in specific studies on strategy, there are many online resources are available to help you determine how to make the most of social media marketing and advertising for your business.