Social media marketing has developed as a powerful web marketing tool, for our B2B clients in Milwaukee and Chicago. But many small businesses struggle to compete against large corporate companies on that front. While a larger corporation may be able to devote a small team to social media marketing, a small company will either have one person managing it – or, they will outsource their social media tasks. Not to mention, your following may be much smaller than those of UPS and Zappos.
Your network (and resources) may be smaller, but your advantage is in knowing more intimately what your network wants and needs. So, why concern yourself with going “viral” when you could pride yourself in taking a down-to-earth, strategic approach? Coming from a B2B full service marketing firm, here are a couple angles you could use to jumpstart your social media strategy:
1.) Strengthen the relationship with your current customers
2.) Focus your reach to a specific, targeted group
Nurturing Your Current Customer Base: One bird in the hand…
Understand that your business doesn’t need content to go “viral” in order to succeed on social media. Unless you’re in the business of posting cute puppy videos, your business’ material most likely will not reach millions upon millions of people. The point isn’t to go viral; the point is to foster a meaningful connection with your network and help your customers move forward in the buying process. Plus, our B2B clients in the Milwaukee and Chicago areas have used social media to boost other web marketing metrics, such as increased traffic to their website and improved SEO for their business.
What kind of posts can you supply that will engage our current customers?
- Product education: do your customers know as much as you think they know about their product? Post infographics on Pinterest, direct a how-to video on YouTube, remind people to get their manufacturing equipment service during shut-down season.
- Intriguing industry-specific content: be involved in your industry dialogue and remind people that you are an expert in the field. Host a discussion about a new invention/concept, publish a blog that expresses your professional opinion. Remember that fresh content will not only attract readers to your site, but it will increase your search engine representation.
- Share important milestones: is your company reaching an anniversary date or have you reached a new sales record? People like to be associated with success, even knowing that they have helped contributed to your success. So, share it and celebrate it!
Growing and Expanding Your Reach: How and Who to Target
Remember our post last week about lead generation? Your social media presence can serve as a research tool AND as a proving ground for new leads. For web marketing clients in Milwaukee and Chicago, our team at Autumn will often perform the research in a new territory, new market or new industry. Then, we will design a web marketing strategy and social media campaign that will allow us to test the engagement of that new audience and gain insights about those new customers, such as:
- how ready are these new prospects to purchase?
- how much do they know and/or are interested about your product or service?
- what is the competition? does the competition also keep a social media presence?
- how does your new audience connect online?
- how can we engage in the dialogue?
Tools of the Trade
For a small business to succeed in the social media world, you need to be smart. Linking up your social media accounts and website is a smart idea. Plan ahead; set out to have several hours dedicated to social media content creation and scheduling each month or two. Organizing your time wisely can help you to work ahead and write quality material for your social media account(s).
If you are interested in learning more about how to leverage social media to help grow your business, connect with Autumn Consulting today! We are a b2b full service marketing firm and we will help you analyze what social media marketing strategies right for your business.
