Social Media Done Right Is Budget-Friendly

Social media is a critical part of any digital marketing strategy for small to mid-sized businesses. Finding the right budget for marketing is a challenge for smaller companies, and leveraging social media mitigates marketing costs when performed correctly. Social media accounts are a great way to add a personal tone to your marketing outreach and connect with customers on a more familiar level. The major social media outlets cost nothing to sign up with and can allow you to create a rapport with your customers to interact with your brand after investing some time on a regular basis.

81% of small and medium businesses use social media, and there are many reasons why. Social media provides your customer base opportunities to engage with your content and share to their own social media circles. Contests, free giveaways, or simply interacting with compelling content (such as a cute picture of a puppy or inspiring messages) are all methods to have your community interact with your brand on social media. Your fans become your publicists and user activity is visible to their friends and followers on outlets such as Facebook. There are 2.072 billion users on Facebook, and without using social media, you deny yourself the chance to reach so many potential customers.

Why Social Media Is Worth Every (Free) Penny

Social media accounts incur additional costs for posts you want to promote or boost (Facebook and Instagram offer such options). The main work involves dedicating your time to generate posts, interact with followers, and planning your content. Whatever your social media platform is, “content is king” and your social media outlets always need maintenance in relevant posts to keep users interested and returning to your site. The more people visit a social media outlet and comment, share, like, or subscribe the larger an impact your site will appear to have, and your brand recognition will grow.

Small and medium business owners easily have access to 2 billion users on Facebook, 326 million users on Twitter, and 500 million monthly active users on LinkedIn just by creating an account. This equalizes the marketing field for brands who want to focus on local customers and attention, providing a more accessible brand voice and presence than a larger business that might have a larger budget, but impersonal content with minimal social media presence. A local mom and pop store has a remarkable opportunity to market to their neighbors and friends, but also generate local fans who will be return customers and generate reviews, recommendations, and other engagement that bigger chains try to garner themselves.

To leverage social media in today’s consumer market means you have one avenue to reach customers that are almost entirely in your own hands to succeed. Invest the time and the effort, do the research about what your customers want, and gear your content to what your followers want to see. Your content must be fascinating enough that your message carries on through your followers, who will share to their followers and friends. As most social media accounts have an inherently low starting cost (free), these are marketing avenues definitely worth exploring.

Design & Promote helps Chicagoland businesses grow and market their brands all across Illinois and beyond. Give us a call at 630-995-7109 to learn more about our services.