Some Cheap Social Media Marketing Techniques for Small Business

Don’t have much money to spend on marketing? No worries – there are lots of marketing strategies that you can use to perform the best marketing in the lesser budget.  Go ahead to know some cheap social media strategies to market your business effectively and efficiently. But, you might be thinking about why you have to invest in social media? Social media platforms are widely used all over the world with nearly 3.43 billion people using social media. Social media is not an option anymore but becomes the need for the present business marketing strategies. Your customers are actively present on social media and they might be searching for you. Whether you have a strong customer base or not, social media marketing is always a great option to market your small business as it helps to increase traffic and conversions from existing as well as new customers. Social media is a great opportunity for small businesses to compete with big brands. This is a cost-effective form of marketing. When compared to old traditional methods like radio, television, newspaper, etc social media is a much cheaper option.  Social media marketing is not much costly, a small business can easily invest in social media with some cheap techniques But to make effective social media plans you have to stay updated with the latest social media trends and apply vigorously to your business. Now if you are a small business owner but not convinced with the need for social media for your business, your mind will change after reading this post and your business will be highly benefited.  As a small business, if you are presently using social media for your business but still don’t get desired results then this post will blow your mind by telling some excellent cheap social media strategies to get you better results.

Importance of social media for business

Social media marketing is a prominent way to reach customers for any type of business. Your customers are already present on social media actively searching for your product. Many customers are already interacting with brands through social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. If you are not interacting with your customers through social media then you are definitely missing a chance to grow your business customers. Unique social media strategies and perfect implementation can be very effective for your website to bring remarkable success to your business. At present 17 out of 20 people buy online and from them, at least 12 people start their searching journey from social media. Statistics show that nearly 65% present search for new products, services, or brands on Facebook only. The content on social media influences users to visit your website to explore more.  Moreover, for small businesses with limited budgets, it is difficult to compete with big brands. But with creative ideas and modifications, anyone can come up in the market using social media. Now, look at some amazing social media marketing techniques that led your business towards success that too at less cost.

Cheap social media marketing techniques for small business

Create profiles on multiple platforms

50% of small businesses said that they are present on Facebook. That’s great! But do you think Facebook alone is enough for maximizing reach and traffic? Certainly not. There are a number of social media platforms present which have a huge customer base. Therefore you have to maintain a strong presence on as many platforms as you can.  Look at the image below-  Facebook is the leading option for small business followed by Instagram and youtube. More than half of the small business owners also invest in Instagram and youtube. And around one-fourth are invested in LinkedIn and Snapchat also. But to take the best advantage of these platforms first you have to identify your audience. For example-  Facebook is best for e-commerce marketing business. Around 67% of social media sales for e-commerce business comes from Facebook only. With nearly 1.5 billion daily users, you can ensure that your target customers are definitely present on social media. An adult spends an average of 40 minutes every day on Facebook. Facebook is the fastest growing social media network.

Post incredible content on a daily basis

Now as you have pages on many social media platforms you have to properly update and maintain them.  To make your pages active on all platforms you have to update them on a daily basis. For this, you have to post incredible content daily. Why do you have to post daily? When a user visits your page and he finds your late post 3-4 weeks ago then there are 80% chances that he leaves the page without any engagement. No one will follow a brand that does not post regularly. This shows that you don’t update your website and pages. Therefore regular posting shows that you are actively updating your social media profiles and pages to bring more users. Now think that your competitor is posting once in 4 days, you can bring out an advantage for you. This is an opportunity to stand out from the competition. It provides a positive impression to your followers and new visitors about your brand.  Now the question arises what to post daily… Consider you are a blogger and write various blogs about mobiles than to bring more traffic you can post about the latest mobiles in the market, their features, their limitations. You can also hold polls to let customers engage in your page. 50% of consumers say that when a company is active on social media, it urges them to make a purchase.

Form relationships with social influencers

With social media, there is a possibility that you can bring traffic without posting content on a daily basis. Well, you are definitely thinking about how this is possible. Influencer marketing is an excellent option to bring visitors to your page and increase your brand visibility with the help of social influencers. Most people think social influencers are players or celebrities. But it’s not so, social influencers are those people who have nearly 10k to 100k followers on their page and they promote the business of you. However, influencer marketing is the fastest-growing way for customer benefit in the digital world. You can approach social influencers to post content about your brand for some amount. This way their followers get to know about your brand and interested ones will certainly come to your page.

Create infographics.

Infographics have become really popular in the digital marketing world. People find them simple and easy because it makes it easy to understand complicated information easily. Moreover, 65% of people share infographics with others. This increases your referrals and backlinks which bring more traffic to your website.   There is no need to hire experts to create these infographics.  With a little understanding of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, you can create attractive infographics yourself.  Also Adding your business logo that won’t distract people from reading is highly recommended.  

Implement automation tools

Posting different content on different social media platforms is time-consuming and as a small business owner, it is not possible for you to give that much time on social media marketing. Therefore managing your social media profiles is difficult for a small business owner and hiring someone may be expensive.  Fortunately, there are some social media automation tools like Buffer, Hootsuite, etc available. These tools help you to schedule and post your social media posts in advance for 10 days. In one go, you can schedule all the posts for a complete week, you can set their date and time in advance and they will automatically be posted at the scheduled time. Automation tools have one more advantage of responding to messages automatically without human support.   

Encourage user-generated content

This point is related to which type of content should be posted along with regular posts. You should publish posts that have user engagement and statistics. This type of content attracts a user’s interest and trust in your brand. The above statistics about user’s buying habits have a direct relationship with a person’s buying decision. Numbers or user-generated content motivates buyers in their decision-making journey. Therefore you can conclude that user-generated content is a great way to get more followers and conversions.  

Take advantage of ephemeral

Ephemeral content is a type of content that stays only for a limited and short period of time like 24 hours. The most common places where you can find this option is Instagram and Snapchat. These platforms have a popular story option that lets you post a story for 24 hours to display something unique. But now Facebook also provides such an option. You can tell people in advance about your upcoming blog topics, product niches, and others. Instagram also provides interactive content options like polls, questions, quizzes, etc. Using these options you can know what your customers want from you.    

Create video content.

According to the reports from Hubspot, 87% of businesses use video as a marketing strategy. Out of which 76% have said that it helped them increase sales. Moreover, visual content is more likely to be remembered and accepted rather than text-based content. People remember visual content for more than 5-6 hours. People love instructional videos to learn a better understanding of products, services, and topics.  

Promote your content on LinkedIn. 

Many businessmen often underestimate LinkedIn, but it’s a great and popular social media marketing platform for b2b business. Don’t just add networks but join groups, make dialog connections, and share posts. Linkedin also provides the option to share full content on topics for LinkedIn users. There are a lot of happenings on LinkedIn so it is definitely a good place to share content and ideas to build your brand credibility.

Use email marketing.

89% of marketers use email marketing as an important strategy to generate leads. It is a popular way to attract new customers and build relationships with them. Email marketing gives you a great opportunity to remain connected with your old customers. You can offer valuable content to your website visitors or subscribers. For example- a post on how to use email marketing to increase leads and conversions.  But remember not to bother him with continuous emails regarding sales and offers. You can start your email marketing with tools like Mailchimp and an active campaign.  

Optimize your social media marketing campaigns

Many Small businessmen are not able to understand the importance of optimizing social media content.  Or, they are not aware of proper techniques to optimize their social media. So here we are telling some unique and effective social media techniques.

• Adding trending hashtags related to your industry can increase your reach.
•  Use rich snippet for your social media posts that attract and influence users to visit your website
• Use keywords-optimized images in your posts, and blogs on social media.
• Be active on relevant social media platforms according to your business. Like if you have a business of clothes then along with Facebook, twitter you should also market on Pinterest and Instagram.

 

Using Pinterest for Social Media Marketing

Pinterest is a great and fastest-growing option for retail marketers and small businessmen to promote their business. It is basically an image-focused platform that can benefit any businessman to drive sales.  Pinterest provides an opportunity for businesses to develop a brand presence with attractive, eye-catchy, and unique pinboards.  

Conclusion

Your small business definitely needs a social media strategy to compete with big brands and maintain their business credibility. You don’t need a higher budget to market on social media. It is definitely possible with cheap social media marketing techniques that can easily and efficiently promote your brand. Along with promotion, social media also helps to increase leads and conversions. This is a lifelong strategy as social media has influenced our lives more than ever before. You can market on these platforms till they have your target customers. All you have to do is to share posts, infographics, videos, images, etc to bring engagement from your visitors. You can also boost up your main social media posts to increase reach, visibility, and conversions. Also, You can extend your reach by approaching social media influencers for promoting your business. You can use automation tools to schedule your posts and save your time.