Social media apps as a marketing tool in social media marketing (SMM) will always be an edge. These social media platforms will allow your small business to interact with and gain customers to develop your small business’s social media presence, boost sales, and enhance website traffic. Let’s see how Social Media Marketing for small businesses works.
Social media has progressed beyond simply allowing people to communicate with family and friends. It is now a resource for customers to learn more about the businesses they are interested in and can be potential service providers. Social Media Marketing is also beneficial for small businesses now.
We recognize the significance of incorporating social media into our marketing mix as marketers. 74% of global business owners are still investing in social media marketing. Imagine the number of businesses that use Social Media Marketing; why not small companies, right? Social Media Marketing for small businesses is a win!
You could miss out on valuable advertising channels if you haven’t considered expanding your current social media strategy. In this chapter, I will explain the importance of social media for business and outline seven platforms you can use to grow your small business.
Now let’s go on how you can leverage such social media platforms to benefit your landscaping business and why they are so important. Have you ever imagined that Social Media Marketing and Small Business are words that will be great allies for profit?
In ranking the most ‘active’ social media sites globally, according to the data portal, Facebook came first with 2.936 billion monthly active members in April 2022.
A Facebook Business page, in short, represents a company or brand and displays the services it offers. On the other hand, a Personal page describes a single social media user and is used to communicate with friends and family and provide updates about the user’s personal life.
It is an excellent way for your small business to interact with your present and potential clients, advertise sales and events, and spread knowledge about your business. Furthermore, Facebook Pages have many more chances and capabilities than a Facebook profile.
If you still do not have a Facebook page for your small business, you must make one as soon as possible. It will help your small business connect with many prospective customers and reduce marketing costs since it is free—Avenue to identify your intended audience and obtain comprehensive audience insights. Your website’s traffic will increase and, of course, improve your SEO.
Leveraging your Facebook business page is like the instructions in previous chapters.
- Optimize Your Facebook Company Page
- Regularly Post Original Content
- Tag Your Products in Your Photo Content
- Enable, Encourage, and Engage with Customer Reviews
Make The Most Of Your Facebook Page Insights
After implementing all of these strategies across your site, you’ll need a way to evaluate what’s working and what might not be worth it for your small business. Perhaps you should change your posting schedule, or maybe you should run more targeted ads.
You can find this information on your small business’s fan page under the Insights tab. This tool can help you make informed decisions about where to spend your time and money for upcoming campaigns.
This feature is accessible by clicking the “Insights” tab on the toolbar of your business page.
With over 300 million active users, Twitter is an excellent platform for your small business to reach and connect with new audiences. It is a go-to social network for businesses to interact with customers effectively. Companies of all sizes have used Twitter to expand their operations.
Here are some suggestions for how to use Twitter for your business.
Make Use Of Hashtags
Hashtags are searchable words or phrases that group hundreds or thousands of tweets. They’re an excellent way to expand the reach of your content beyond your followers. Most active Twitter users are familiar with many popular hashtags, such as #FollowFriday and #ThrowbackThursday. So you could use some things according to your business, for example, #PattyPastry – Bread and pastry business, #CrumbsOfCookie – online cookie store, or #SweetScentsbyAly – scent/perfume shops, and so on.
Use Photos, GIFs, And Polls On Twitter To Obtain Relevant Content
Including photos and GIFs in your tweets is an excellent way to engage your followers. Twitter includes a GIF keyboard; search for a keyword and select the clip that best fits your tweet.
Interact With Customers And Influencers
On Twitter, it’s critical to interact with the right people. Engaging with your customers to keep them happy and potential customers to help them learn more about your business is always a good idea. Perhaps you’d like to focus on others, such as journalists or influencers whose specialties are relevant to your business.
Handle Issues Via Direct Messages
Direct messaging has evolved, particularly for brands. It is a critical platform for troubleshooting and dealing with your customers’ issues, and how you interact with them is essential.
Any business can benefit from Instagram as a marketing tool, regardless of budget. To help you achieve your objectives, pick a business goal and develop an advertising plan.
As a business, you can use your Instagram feed content to be your virtual portfolio for your potential customers to see. Showcase the products and services your business offers.
Instagram accounts have two classifications, personal or individual accounts, creator accounts, and business accounts. Each of these has its own set of characteristics, benefits, and drawbacks. Get your Instagram business account started. Find the history in settings and select Switch to Professional Account. Choose the category that best describes your company, then clicks business. You’re all set now that you have an Instagram business account. Complete your profile using the suggestions below.
Linked In
There are currently over 830 million registered users on the platform. These users include 90 million senior-level influencers and 63 million decision-makers. LinkedIn has proven to be an effective lead generation and customer acquisition platform.
The most effective network for generating leads is certainly LinkedIn. LinkedIn offers incredibly personalized means of discovering potential leads, engaging them, and converting them into customers, in addition to more conventional methods like noting intriguing content potential buyers can download or pushing traffic to relevant sources.
As a small business owner, LinkedIn is one of the most effective online platforms for connecting with your target market, which may need your products or services.
Bing
After Google and Facebook, it is the third most popular website in many nations. It has a 38.46 percent market share among console users in the United States. Bing accounted for nearly half (45.66 percent) of US console searches in 2018, indicating a slight decline in market share.
Microsoft’s free business directory is Bing Places for Business. It is comparable to Google My Business accounts, which also appear in local search results. Those who use this platform benefit from exposure to over 1 billion monthly users—and gain a significant competitive advantage.
TikTok
Pretty sure you know about TikTok, or at least you’ve heard about it. As one of the most popular platforms today, TikTok helped many businesses grow. May it be clothes, cosmetics, food, skincare products, etc. The best thing to do is to take advantage of its use as a marketing tool for your landscaping business.
TikTok is available in more than 150 countries, has over one billion users, and has been downloaded more than 200 million times in the United States alone. If your brand’s target audience is anyone aged 13 to 60, you should be on TikTok.
Businesses can benefit from TikTok marketing by raising their business awareness. All that for free! Imagine how much TikTok has improved and that everybody is now welcome to use it.
2 Types Of TikTok Accounts
- Personal Account – The only form of account on TikTok that may be made private is a personal account, though these accounts have fewer API-enabled features. With TikTok Personal Accounts, All of the popular music on TikTok is available to you if you but also often unable to access TikTok Analytics, auto-publish videos, or regulate their TikTok comments through Conversations. This account is for people who only want to watch or create content; that is the primary use of a personal TikTok account. When you have a personal account on TikTok, you get :
- Business Account – Due to TikTok’s API, business accounts have access to more features than personal accounts. As a result, TikTok Business Accounts have complete access to capabilities.
Content Ideas
There will always be endless possibilities in choosing content ideas on TikTok, but here are the following tips that will always be timely and align with the line of business industry you have.
- Transformation videos – These kinds of videos are what people love. Who doesn’t want to see a fantastic transformation that looks impossible until you reveal it? For example, if you have a cleaning business, you can use a before and after clip of glass window. Before the cleaner uses your products and after they did. It will set an expectation on how good or bad your firm is in this field.
- Time-Lapse – For those curious to see how the landscaping process is happening, the type of video perfect for them is time-lapse. It can see in a highly straightforward way but with enough pace to see how it works and the process of everything. Time-lapse is a convenient way of showcasing how you do your services or products in a long process for a short time.
- Satisfying – The kind of content fits everyone on the app, old, young, parent, kid, or whatever. Because enjoyable videos have one of the highest views on TikTok, you can use them as a marketing strategy. For example, if you have a Car Wash business, you can film a video while you scrub a filthy car in a very satisfying way. If it looks fast and clean, it will fit the ‘satisfying’ category, and people will love it. Or, for example, you can take a video of your landscaper mowing the lawn in a very organized manner that gives a satisfying feeling to the viewers, then it is going to do.
- Reels/Compilation – Reels is a term on social media that means a compilation of images, video snippets, and some montages of your previous works or sold products, just like a portfolio in video form. Reels will be an excellent pinned TikTok so that everyone can see what your business exactly does and how you do it.
All these, when used right and partnered with the sounds that fit it well, these concepts will significantly help grow your small business. As long as the results connect to your page’s branding, it will be great content.
E-mail marketing
There were an estimated 3.8 billion e-mail accounts worldwide at the start of 2019, a 100 million increase from 2018. It is in use by half of the world’s population.
Like social media marketing, it is an excellent way to stay on the list with your customers to increase repeat business and referrals. E-mail marketing is the most cost-effective way to communicate with your customers than direct mail and newsletters. E-mail can entice your customers to join you on social media effectively.
Ever since there has been e-mailing, there has been e-mailing marketing. E-mail marketing is one of the oldest forms of advertising your business online. Although it gets a bad rap because of all the spam going around, it’s still one of the most effective forms of marketing.
Today, some business owners may be skeptical of e-mail marketing because of the numerous new platforms that have risen to the top. It is a powerful tool for getting the phone to ring and driving traffic to your website, but e-mail has both good and bad uses.
Did you know that your existing customers are the easiest ones to serve?
One of the most common mistakes business owners make is that they rarely market to or communicate with their existing client base. Companies will spend thousands of dollars to acquire new customers but never consider marketing to their current customers.
How to start an e-mail campaign?
E-mail marketing service
Top 4 Best E-mail Marketing Services
- Sendinblue — Best overall.
- Constant Contact — Best drag-and-drop builder.
- MailerLite — Best for the essentials at an affordable price.
- Omnisend —Best e-mail and SMS marketing combo.
You have to have them so your e-mail does not appear unprofessional, so that you do not get blocklisted for sending bulk e-mails, and can track your open e-mails.
What Should You Send, And When Should You Send It?
You should follow the 80/20 rule. It means 80 helpful percent information and 20% sales. It’s sad to break it to you, but no one will read an e-mail listing all of your services.
Assume you are a customer; would you like to receive 3-4 e-mails per week, all of which are 100% sales? Who wouldn’t despise it? That is something you do not want. Once a month is an ideal frequency because it will only serve as a reminder that you still provide services and exist.
There is a lot of hype surrounding social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and many others. It’s a no-brainer today because we live in the digital age.
You must understand and remember that, no matter how accustomed you are to traditional marketing when someone requires your services, the first step they take is to search online for where they can obtain or obtain them.
So, how can a local business like yours use the abovementioned platforms for social media marketing? How can you use it to help your business grow?
Let us have another question as an answer.
“Have you seen the eye-popping statistics for all of these platforms?”
Read that again. Have you seen how many people use these platforms? Awesome right? Imagine all those people being able to discover your business.
All these platforms have differences and advantages, but there is one thing and their sole purpose. Now that you’ve seen how much Social Media Marketing for small businesses can help the owners, there is a word that needs emphasis.
Connect
Use these platforms to connect with your sphere of influence, whether past or present, to strengthen and maintain existing relationships. Leverage the effect of Social Media Marketing for businesses. You will remain at the top of the customer’s priority list, increasing repeat and referral business.
