In our new Marketing Voices series, we invite exciting digital marketing professionals to join the conversation. This month’s guest post is by Nick Rojas, an experienced business consultant and writer living in Los Angeles and Chicago. Nick has consulted small and medium-sized enterprises for over twenty years and has contributed articles to Visual.ly, Entrepreneur, and TechCrunch.
It’s no secret that startups, small businesses, and even one-man entrepreneurial operations all share a need to invest in digital marketing. While search engine optimization and excellent content go a long way towards creating growth, social media cannot be ignored if you want to jumpstart your business’s future and start connecting with your audience in an effective way.
Social media marketing is a major element of any successful digital marketing strategy. It provides benefits that even the best content marketing strategies or email lists cannot produce on their own. If your small business doesn’t have a strong social media presence, or hasn’t budgeted towards social media growth, you are missing out on key leads, easy conversions, and effective sales.
Why Is Social Media Marketing Worth Spending Money On?
Perhaps you already know how effective social media marketing is, but have been reluctant to buy-in and start sponsoring paid advertisements. Even if you have a good amount of activity on your page at the moment, an efficient social media marketing campaign is well worth investing in. Here are five reasons why:
High Volume Lead Generation:
According to LinkedIn, digital marketers who combine proven content strategies with a social media marketing campaign stand to earn an average of 42% to 57% more leads through paid advertisements. Social media offers powerful tools for generating leads when combined with great content that merits sponsorship.
Excellent Rate of Return:
The costs normally associated with social media marketing campaigns tend to be relatively small when compared to traditional marketing methods. However, the rate of return that social media offers is often, on a per-conversion basis, much higher than even the most complete traditional marketing strategies.
While social media costs can rise for mid-level businesses and large enterprises, the startup costs for small business ad sponsorship are small enough to offer enormous rates of return on your initial investment. There is simply no reason not to take advantage of the opportunities social media offers small businesses from this point of view.
Complementary Data:
When you interact with your customers on social media channels like Facebook and Twitter, you learn much more about them then you would by any other means. This kind of data is critical for understanding your demographic as a small business and giving you the information you need to grow.
Use analytics tools to complement your existing customer database, or create contests and sweepstakes to spur interaction while gathering all-important customer data. Even a simple gift certificate program can reward your business enormously on social media—a free gift certificate template like that on Shopify.com can go a long way.
Connect With Super Users:
Whether your business sells software or superglue, good products combined with a well-designed social media marketing campaign will result in the emergence of super users—regular customers who are so impressed that they become brand advocates for you. Only on social media can you connect with super users and reward them for the essentially free marketing benefits they provide you.
No other digital marketing channel offers the level of connectedness necessary to inspire regular customers to carry your brand into new markets. Social media, however, quickly pays for itself with the ability to make yourself known through the actions of a few dedicated influencers.
Greater Content Performance:
If you have already invested in great content like most small businesses and entrepreneurs do, half the battle towards enjoying the benefits of a great social media campaign is over. An active and healthy social media presence will breathe new life into your content, allowing it to perform along far greater and wider demographics than it could otherwise.
If you are a small business owner looking to take your digital marketing to the next level, investing in social media marketing is a surefire way to jumpstart the process. Whether you spend a tiny fraction of your total marketing budget on social media or decide to go all-in, you can be sure that you will be rewarded for taking the right approach.
Follow Nick on Twitter @NickARojas, or reach him via email: NickAndrewRojas@gmail.com.
Marketing Voices: 5 Reasons Small Businesses Should Budget for
November 15, 2015
Nick Rojas
In our new Marketing Voices series, we invite exciting digital marketing professionals to join the conversation. This month’s guest post is by Nick Rojas, an experienced business consultant and writer living in Los Angeles and Chicago. Nick has consulted small and medium-sized enterprises for over twenty years and has contributed articles to Visual.ly, Entrepreneur, and TechCrunch.
It’s no secret that startups, small businesses, and even one-man entrepreneurial operations all share a need to invest in digital marketing. While search engine optimization and excellent content go a long way towards creating growth, social media cannot be ignored if you want to jumpstart your business’s future and start connecting with your audience in an effective way.
Social media marketing is a major element of any successful digital marketing strategy. It provides benefits that even the best content marketing strategies or email lists cannot produce on their own. If your small business doesn’t have a strong social media presence, or hasn’t budgeted towards social media growth, you are missing out on key leads, easy conversions, and effective sales.
Why Is Social Media Marketing Worth Spending Money On?
Perhaps you already know how effective social media marketing is, but have been reluctant to buy-in and start sponsoring paid advertisements. Even if you have a good amount of activity on your page at the moment, an efficient social media marketing campaign is well worth investing in. Here are five reasons why:
High Volume Lead Generation:
According to LinkedIn, digital marketers who combine proven content strategies with a social media marketing campaign stand to earn an average of 42% to 57% more leads through paid advertisements. Social media offers powerful tools for generating leads when combined with great content that merits sponsorship.
Excellent Rate of Return:
The costs normally associated with social media marketing campaigns tend to be relatively small when compared to traditional marketing methods. However, the rate of return that social media offers is often, on a per-conversion basis, much higher than even the most complete traditional marketing strategies.
While social media costs can rise for mid-level businesses and large enterprises, the startup costs for small business ad sponsorship are small enough to offer enormous rates of return on your initial investment. There is simply no reason not to take advantage of the opportunities social media offers small businesses from this point of view.
Complementary Data:
When you interact with your customers on social media channels like Facebook and Twitter, you learn much more about them then you would by any other means. This kind of data is critical for understanding your demographic as a small business and giving you the information you need to grow.
Use analytics tools to complement your existing customer database, or create contests and sweepstakes to spur interaction while gathering all-important customer data. Even a simple gift certificate program can reward your business enormously on social media—a free gift certificate template like that on Shopify.com can go a long way.
Connect With Super Users:
Whether your business sells software or superglue, good products combined with a well-designed social media marketing campaign will result in the emergence of super users—regular customers who are so impressed that they become brand advocates for you. Only on social media can you connect with super users and reward them for the essentially free marketing benefits they provide you.
No other digital marketing channel offers the level of connectedness necessary to inspire regular customers to carry your brand into new markets. Social media, however, quickly pays for itself with the ability to make yourself known through the actions of a few dedicated influencers.
Greater Content Performance:
If you have already invested in great content like most small businesses and entrepreneurs do, half the battle towards enjoying the benefits of a great social media campaign is over. An active and healthy social media presence will breathe new life into your content, allowing it to perform along far greater and wider demographics than it could otherwise.
If you are a small business owner looking to take your digital marketing to the next level, investing in social media marketing is a surefire way to jumpstart the process. Whether you spend a tiny fraction of your total marketing budget on social media or decide to go all-in, you can be sure that you will be rewarded for taking the right approach.
Follow Nick on Twitter @NickARojas, or reach him via email: NickAndrewRojas@gmail.com.