If the surveys are to be believed, almost eight out of every ten small businesses struggle with the execution of their marketing strategies. Thankfully, more and more small businesses are turning towards internet as a marketing medium for their businesses. I said thankfully because Internet in general and social media in particular presents a mammoth advertising and marketing opportunity for businesses that cannot afford spending big bucks on traditional marketing techniques.
SMO or Social Media Optimization has worked effectively for many corporate companies. More and more small businesses are turning towards social media to reap some of its benefits. While the extent of advantages might differ, but there are some proven advantages of SMO that we will discuss in this post.
Better Conversion Rate
One of the basic concerns for any investor, regardless of the scale they are operating at, is ROI. ROI (Return on Investment) is something all investors are bothered about. No investor sees any point in spending on a strategy, or an asset that will not produce a substantial return. ROI is even more important for small business, because they don’t have a big budget to experiment with.
A well executed and properly planned Social Media marketing has shown better conversion rates for investors. Unlike some of the other techniques employed on the web, SMO is a much targeted method of marketing that can produce excellent results as far as conversion rate is concerned, thus ensuring a high return on investment.
Making New Customers
Social Media, as it is palpable by the name itself, is all about socializing. Maintaining a presence on any of the popular platforms on the web can help more and more people find you on the web. The internet is not just a pool of people; it is more like a never ending stream that will keep bringing countless visitors on daily basis. The dynamic world of Social Media helps you channel this stream to become your customers, giving you an opportunity to interact with more and more people on almost daily basis. This dramatically increases your chances of making new customers.
Retaining Old Customers
For most companies, SMO has proven to be the best mode for staying in touch with the old customers. There is nothing more precious for a company then its customers. Social Media has provided the ease of not only retaining your old customers but it has also allowed businesses to let them in on your new offers and deals.
Retaining old customers, for just about any business, is almost as important as making new ones. So, once you have a customer, interacting with them, or keeping them engaged at a social network is a good way of retaining and getting new referrals.
Direct feedback
Of all the advantages represented by the social networks, a less attractive but a very important advantage nonetheless is direct feedback coming from your target market. For many companies, feedback is limited to something that they get only from their angry customers. To look on the brighter side of the picture, any feedback, even if it is criticism, can give you an opportunity to learn from your mistakes and rectify your errors.
The first priority of any business should be the complete satisfaction of all customers. It’s true that you cannot keep everyone happy but as a business, it is your responsibility to at least try to satisfy each and every customer and collecting feedback while using one of these social media platforms can help.
Cost Effective
Basic features at social networks are free, but money is not the only thing that you invest as a small business. It is also your time and energy that goes into managing various social network accounts. It also requires a certain level of commitment, hard work, and good communication skills to keep up, respond and update information on various platforms.
More often than not, small businesses select an old employee from the company who allocates a certain amount of his time to perform the said duties. This method is suitable and effective than hiring a new employee and assigning him/her this all important task. Automated profiles are a big No.
If you own a small business and you’ve been keeping the idea of social networks or the social media at an arm’s length so far, then now is the time to embrace it. You cannot deny the power of social media, and the presence and investment of almost all big companies on these platforms are a testimony to their influence.
This is a guest post by Isabella, you can check out the guidelines to guest post here.
Image Credit: wynneprini
10 comments
I agree with much of what you write, especially that online marketing is cost effective. The internet has a lot to offer smaller companies and not through a lot of work as many think. The most important is to get to the key tools and make a steady plan to stick to. This can give results pretty fast. Thanks for the post 🙂
I think that it is very difficult if not impossible for small to mid sized entrepreneurs to take advantage from Social Media Marketing.Because on Social Media people generally tend to follow the Giants of the real world.Who would have time to listen, what any Tom Dick and Harry says about his service (even if he provides a better service then any Giant Company in his niche).So I think that Social Media is best suited fro Giants of the real world and it is very difficult for small entrepreneurs to establish their business through Social Media.
Hi Isabella!
Totally agree with you! Social media gives great opportunities for small businesses. But we must use these opportunities wisely and carefully.
Best,
Eric Lenhard
Working in catering for many years, I recognize the importance of negative feedback, and also of learning about any potential complaint or bad word-of-mouth advertizing before it actually happens. This is where social media really comes into its own, as you can do what savvy bricks-and-mortar business have been doing for years, but now on a global level. This is definitely applicable to small business, and I think it is something that small businesses can actually be more effective at than the big global brands.
Social media optimization is really an efficient and effective way to grab customers. People who are unfortunate even can get traffic through the same. Social media networks are just doing a great job by emphasizing on the quality and interest rather than on business. Thank God, at least somewhere we can expect ethics in the web world where people can expect to suffice their interests!
The social media is a great way to capture the eyes and minds of whatever audience you desire. Depending on your product, some of the consumers will be interested and tell other people about it. If you find similarities among your consumers, stick to a certain method of delivery that keeps them happy.
Clearly small business owners are finding great value in social media marketing. In many cases, they’re benefiting more than their large company peers.
thank you Isabella for this information.SMO is a good way for gaining more and more visitors with higher conversion and using it with SEO will make your business get on its feet in the market .Feedback are needed for every company so that new customers will trust this company without much worrying because they know that a company that cares about its feedback meaning Brand will not provide a bad service.It needs more efforts to realize SMO and SEO but it will be worthy.
In my opinion smo it’s a very important adjustment and part of a SEO strategy, additionally it can help your posts to go viral which is the best marketing method so if someone don’t use smo he will lose a lot of opportunities and potential visitors
I believe that retaining old customers is in fact much more effective than generating new ones. Great article!