6 ReasonsWhy Small Businesses Should Budget for

Social Media Marketing

Social media has undoubtedly become one of the most essential elements ofthe Internet, if not one of the most essential parts of our daily lives. It’s wherewe spend our time consuming our favorite content, share posts about thingsthat matter to us, and where we connect with friends and family.

Since it is inherently a place ideal for social interactions, many companies arewondering how and if it makes sense to enter the social sphere to advertisetheir products and services. The good news is that social media has evolvedquite a bit since the early 2000s. So here are six reasons why small businessesshould budget for social media marketing.

1- It’s Affordable:

Unlike traditional advertising, such as print ads and TV commercials, socialmedia is much (much!) more affordable and has the potential to reach waymore people. There are two main considerations you should make whenbudgeting for social marketing:

Fee for a social media manager – either a full time staffer or part-timefreelancer, who can take on the daunting task of producing enough contentand communicating with your followers and potential customers,Promoted posts – these are mostly the exact same posts that you wouldalready put on your social “walls,” just that in this case you pay a small fee (aslow as $1) to make sure that people will see your post.social msocial media main imageedia main image

2- It’s Easy:

You don’t have to have a marketing degree to understand and manage socialmedia. In fact, the term “social media expert” became kind of a joke during theearly days of social network existence because no one really knew what theywere doing. Some people were better than others in making friends andbuilding a following online, but you could not really call them “experts.”

The important takeaway here is that social media marketing does notnecessarily require a university degree in sales and marketing, but it can beacquired knowledge by applying the simple “trial and error” method.

The upside of investing into social media marketing, thus, is that you canimmediately get a good understanding of why, where, and how the moneyshould be spent – unlike a lot of traditional marketing, where complicatedreports can be rather challenging to interpret and require a business degree.

3- It’s Effective:

Probably one of the most important reasons to consider investing into a socialmedia campaign is that it’s simply effective. The world has evolved and peopleare now online and on their mobile devices; this won’t change any time soon.

As the increasingly wide variety of digital screens only adds to thefragmentation of our media landscape, social networks are becoming the onlyplaces where you know for sure that people can be reached.

While SEO and PPC marketing is also helpful, it mostly relies on the fact thatpeople will “find” you through search engines. With promoted posts and othermethods, however, you can make sure that you will effectively reach youraudience on social platforms.

4- It Provides Important Data:

Data is crucial. Without it, you would not be able to tell what works and whatdoesn’t. With it, you can make smart decisions on how to spend yourmarketing budget efficiently – in other words, stop campaigns that don’t seemto be working, and invest more money into those that show high responserates.

Since social networks were born out of the Internet, data measurement is builtinto their DNA; which is why Facebook Insights and Twitter’s Ads panel, forexample, are such powerful tools for you to analyze your audience’s behavior.

social media for small business

5- It Gets You Closer to Your Customers:

Nothing, not even the best advertisement in the world, can replace the value ofa human interaction between business and customers. It simply is the bestway to build a relationship with potential customers and gain their trust in thelong run.

Social media is the perfect place to start this relationship and communicationwith your existing and future customers. The best part? Not only can youreach people in your local community, but really anyone in the world who hasa social media account. (This becomes especially attractive if you own andoperate an ecommerce store, since anyone in the world could be a customer.)

6- Your Target Audience Is In One Place

Speaking of people and relationships; what social networks do better thananything else is bring like-minded individuals together in one, accessible place.That’s why LinkedIn, for example, is the perfect place for B2B businesses toadvertise and do customer outreach in, because it is a social network thatspecifically attracts business professionals and entrepreneurs.

So are you ready to invest into social media marketing now?

Igools: Transparent Baking Packaging Leader

Focus on baking packaging, factory direct sale! Produce pastry boxes, cakeboxes, paper bags, packaging accessories etc.

More info: www.igools.comEmail: sales@igools.com