It amazes me, slightly annoys me, but does not surprise me
that some small business owners have not yet conformed to the power of social
media marketing only to continue to spend large sums of money on quarter page
adverts in local newspapers, which reach a small fraction of their target
audience. You could expect to spend in excess of £250 for this example of
newspaper advertising, but has money been well invested?
Before answering
that question let’s look at some of the reasons small business owners give for
still using this form of advertising instead of social media marketing:
1.”We always
have.” 2. “Its’ tried and tested.” 3. “Social media marketing only works for household
brands.” 4. “Social media is just a fad.” And the best reason 5. “I don’t
understand it…” Well, to me, each of these excuses sound like fear
of change in its purest form. When something isn’t working or is inefficient,
repeating the same process will not change the outcome. Nothing happens by
accident. The most successful businesses are dynamic businesses. Change, in
fact, interests customers.
Let me now answer
the reasons for not trying social media marketing:
“We always have”- I’d be writing this on
paper if this was everyone’s attitude.
“It’s tried and tested”- It wasn’t
always tested.
“Social media marketing only works for
household brands”- We will visit this later.
“Social media is just a fad”- Tell that
to the 800 million users on Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg who operates Facebook
with a $1.5 billion annual profit.
“I don’t understand it…”- When I started
Dreamtheatre I didn’t understand financial forecasting, but I knew my business
plan would benefit from it. I cared, so I learned. Get with the program or
you’ll go under.
I’ll now try
to explain how social media can work very well for small businesses using a
simple example:
A client of
Dreamtheatre owns a small coffee shop. One day 10 customers who are visiting
this coffee shop show this on Facebook by using the ‘Check-in’ function. This
then appears on the Facebook News Feed which is visible to all of their
friends. Each of these customers has 300 Facebook friends. This means that
potentially 3000 people have seen that this is the coffee shop their friend
likes to visit… Everyone knows that there is no better form of marketing than
friend recommendation. If you were a client of Dreamtheatre then this kind of
daily exposure would cost as little as £145 per month. Now compare this with
£250 for a newspaper ad that only appears for one day.
The most
valuable ability Facebook marketing has is that it allows you to target your
market; very precisely. An advert for the coffee shop in the previous example
could be targeted at students from The University of Glasgow, living in the
west end of Glasgow, between the ages of 18 and 21. This amazing ability cuts
out wasteful spending and increases the chances that the advert will reach its
intended target and be successful.
Now ask
yourself; could social media marketing be useful for your small business?
