It’s an undeniable fact that Social Media Marketing offers quite lots of benefits for small business owners not only to market their business, but also to engage their customers.
Social Media Marketing is one of the essential marketing strategies any serious business owner should consider.
Thanks to the popularity of social media, this form of marketing was virtually unknown before the advent of social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook.
Today, social media efforts undeniably raise awareness and drive traffic to business websites. Known and established brands are also benefiting of Social Media Marketing.
As a small business owner, your social media efforts can be used as a standard through which you can measure your engagement with customers and its impacts on the business.
How Business Owners Can Make Social Media Marketing Work For Them
It’s not just about using Social Media Marketing for your business promotion, it’s more about making it work for your business.
Social Media Marketing is capable of improving customer engagement and relation. So many studies have shown that brands are more engaged with their customers through social media than any other means.
The outcome of any business’s social efforts should be to drive real business results which can include reducing the cost of support, improving customer satisfaction, building brand loyalty, and driving revenue.
Only then you can realistically enjoy the full benefits of connecting with your customers through social media.
Below are what you should do to ensure that your social media marketing efforts work for your business:
1). Listen to your social customers
For business owners to get real and quantifiable social media marketing ROI, there is the need to make sure that they listen to their customers. When consumers connect with brands on social media sites such as Facebook, they usually want to be heard, and a business owner, always listen and make your customers feel appreciated.
When people tweet about your brand or product, they sometimes expect to hear from you. So what will it take for you to send a “thank you” tweet to somebody that have just tweeted about your business? I have tweeted about some big brands in the past, and the response from them have really been encouraging.
If you want to ensure that your social media marketing activities actually work for you, don’t let your customers down. Any customer that tweets about your brands will surely be happy to hear from you after tweeting about your brands.
Listening to what your customers have to say about your brand is a fundamental component of getting to social media marketing ROI because it’ll allow you to identify and develop relationships.
2). Build a community and engage your customers with purpose
There is no sky-rocket science about it, the very best way to achieve your business objectives is through social customers who are truly engaged with your brand. It’s possible that when fans like you brand on Facebook, it results in better quality interactions.
Social media marketing strategy can only work better when you are able to get your audience engaged. Customer engagement is one of the most important measures of marketing effectiveness, and when you get it right, your brand and business will enjoy a huge benefit.
3). Build your business operation around social media customers
Most of the businesses that have significantly benefited from social media marketing usually have the policies, processes, and technologies in place to make social customers and their experiences the heart of the business.
Not only do they deliver better customer experiences, they also enjoy more streamlined internal operations and reduced costs.
As a business owner, you must maximize your business value of all social customer interactions to gain insight into customer decision-making, build brand advocacy, drive innovation and generate sales leads from social media.
4). Extend the business value of your social interactions
As a business owner, if you truly want your social media marketing efforts to be more effective and efficient, it’s imperative to extend your business value of your social interactions.
Are you actively engaging your customers on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter? How does your brand respond to new likes and followers on social media sites? The essence of using social media to market or promote your brand is to ensure that you value your customers.
When businesses interact with their customers on social media, they will be able to gather enormous data about consumer behaviour and analyse it for business use.
It is a known fact that consumer interactions on Facebook are extremely data rich that can be used by business owners to further enhance customer support experience.
There is the need to let your customers on social media sites feel part of your business. When your brand have new followers or likes, it will do your business good to send messages like “welcome” or “thank you”. You can also introduce your new followers to offers, and ask for feedback.
