Social Media and Online Marketing for Offline Business

The online landscape has evolved quickly in the last 5 years (or less) and, consequently, the way people find, choose and interact with businesses has changed dramatically.  Consumers have been given more choice with the explosion of online retail.  No longer do we turn to the yellow pages to locate a business, we ask google or social media instead.  The evolution of online marketing for small businesses means that you can use it to your advantage.  Implementing a system that works doesn’t need to be overwhelming or excessively time consuming either.

Local businesses tend to rely on passing foot traffic, traditional advertising (radio & print) and word of mouth referral to build their customer base.  In today’s crowded retail marketplace they are more reliant on customer loyalty than ever.  Traditional advertising is increasingly less viable due to cost but, more disconcertingly, the difficulty in measuring return on investment and capturing leads.

Online marketing for small business, specifically using social media + website + email marketing together, offers great opportunities to create customer loyalty and serve low cost advertising to a targeted and engaged market.

Every business has an audience on Facebook, PLUS it is secure and easy to use.  Once you have a strong foothold on Facebook there is opportunity to expand on to other social media platforms to further grow your reach.

In addition to providing you with the ability to entice more customers through the door, by utilising online marketing for small business you are creating a really strong foundation from which to grow your business or take it online.  Here are a few things to keep in mind as you start to develop the online marketing strategy for your business.

Users are on social media to learn, be entertained and build relationships.

However, whilst social media is a tremendous tool for attracting and retaining customers it is important to remember that irrespective of how big your business following becomes you do not own your audience.  Each social media platform owns your audience and can manipulate what they do and do not see.  The purpose of these manipulations is not to enforce a ‘business user pays’ environment but to ensure ongoing positive user experiences in line with the reasons why they are there in the first place.

Social Media needs should be approached strategically not with a ‘if we build it they will come’ mentality.

Essentially, you wouldn’t approach other marketing techniques in this way.  Social media, used the right way, can become a powerful marketing tool for your business.  Setting up a page, posting occasionally and popping up a sign in store to ‘like us on Facebook’ will gain you a following of your existing loyal customers but is unlikely to deliver much more than that.  Your business will likely become invisible on Facebook and it will not work to your advantage.

The two key metrics on Facebook are engagement and reach.

In short, engagement is the number of people who are interacting with your page and reach is the number of people who are seeing your posts.

The higher the engagement the greater your organic reach will become because Facebook knows that people like what they see and ensure that your posts appear in people’s feed.  The higher your organic reach the more people there are seeing your stuff, so you will likely get greater engagement.  It is a chicken and egg thing.

High engagement relies on your Facebook page having good content that people want to see.  Working with a social media strategist and manager will ensure that your content is the type of stuff that will appeal to your audience and ultimately turn them into a community of regular customers.

A strong social media presence is worth little without a good website and email marketing strategy to back it up.

Imagine if Facebook decided to turn off Facebook (or someone hacked your account and irrevocably damaged it).  Any business who had put most of their eggs in the Facebook basket would suddenly have a much online presence.  Directing your customers away from Facebook, and other social media, to your own online home (website and email database) is the goal with social media.

Your business website represents a big opportunity to engage and attract potential customers.  The bottom line is, the more you give your customers for free the more they want to spend their money with you.  Free doesn’t mean discounted products or services either, yes that is always going to attract people, but if they are learning from you or you are entertaining them in some way such that they feel like they are part of a community around your business then their loyalty and trust towards your brand will remain strong.

Your website works hand in hand with your email marketing strategy and customer database to form the third pillar the online marketing strategy for your business.

Developing and implementing online marketing for small and local businesses is what we specialise in.  As a small, family owned and run business ourselves we understand the pressures of time and money.  We work with businesses like yours to build a solid online presence.  If you want a hand getting started, without the overwhelm, click here to get in touch