Social Media Marketing For Small Business

Where does social media – networking sites, forums, blogs, wikis and the like, fit with your overall marketing strategy? The simple answer is that social media doesn't replace your other marketing – it just changes the blend and the mix..

Markering for small business can be categorised into two main areas – Online and Offline. These are then broken down into further categories.

Online:

Website & Search Engine strategies
Customer relationship strategies
List building strategies
Sales strategies
Social Media strategies

Offline:

Hands-off strategies (where you communicate indirectly with your customers) such as direct mail, advertising, marketing collateral and promotional items, sponsorship and press releases
Hands-on strategies (where you communicate face-to-face with your customers) such as events, trade shows and seminars
Shared strategies (where you work with others to jointly grow your businesses) such as networking, joint ventures, business alliances and referrals

Small business marketing is about finding the right blend of these strategies to meet your specific goals. Social media is just one part of the blend – but there are many reasons Social Media is a core part of the blend for small business marketing.

For starters - it's almost totally free! The only cost with much of the social media strategies is your time if you do it yourself.

One of the benefits of your social media strategy is that you can target it so it also achieves the side targets of all of your other online strategies – loyal customers, bigger mailing list, better sales, and increased search engine rankings.

The main drawbacks are that it can be tricky to learn what and how to do it; your peers and your colleagues don't understand it and will tend to knock the approach; and if not done correctly it will take a lot of time without much result.

Off-line marketing strategies have years of proven results. The main drawbacks are they often cost a lot to do and in many cases you simply don't get the results you were hoping for. Many people have had the experience of paying $3000+ for a tradeshow booth plus fit-out and printing costs, as well as wages and employee time, for no result.

It doesn't matter whether you use online or off line strategies, you need to calculate return on investment. You need to know how much each strategy costs to acquire a new customer. So using the tradeshow example – assume the person spent $5000 on the show when all costs were factored in and they acquired 10 new customers. The cost to acquire each new customer was $500. Each customer needs to spend more than $500 with you in order to generate a return on your investment.

One of the greatest sink costs are networking events. Add up the cost of your membership fees, annual fees, meal costs, lost earning time (if appropriate) and then calculate how much new business you have generated from that process. Are you generating a return on your investment?

Of course not everything is about money – if your personal needs for connection and being part of something bigger are being met through your networking events, then your networking costs are personally worthwhile. Just be clear to yourself that you are not really following a business strategy, but a personal development strategy and you will go into your next networking event with a slightly different outlook and will enjoy it more.

So where does social media fit with your marketing strategy? It all depends on what you want to achieve, the amount you have to spend and the time you have available. In my experience it is something worth adding to your marketing blend.

Ingrid Cliff is a Brisbane freelance writer and the Chief Word Wizard of Heart Harmony - her writing services studio that helps put your business into words. Ingrid writes a free weekly newsletter packed full of small business tips to help both you and your business grow www.heartharmony.com.au.