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
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