Why should a small business market on social media? Social media marketing is fantastic because it doesn’t require significant resources to succeed. Additionally, social media makes it incredibly easy to efficiently reach large audiences. According to an article from LM Somecon, as much as 61% of Finns aged 16 to 89 actively use social media. This percentage translates to over 2.5 million Finnish individuals, a significant audience that can offer favorable target groups and potential buyers for businesses. Despite the large number of people on social media in Finland, marketers can leverage the algorithms of different platforms and channels to target very specific audiences from these vast user bases.
Furthermore, gaining visibility has never been this inexpensive and straightforward. On platforms like Facebook, you can get 1000 impressions for your ad for an average of 5 euros, depending on your campaign objective. You can target this affordable visibility towards people who are most likely interested in your products and services. This means you can achieve more and better-quality impressions with a smaller investment compared to traditional advertising methods.
Defining a Clear Objective for Your Social Media Advertising
Often, businesses jump into social media just because everyone else is doing it. Establishing a presence on platforms like Facebook or Instagram can happen without much planning, as long as you get your business visible and heard. This is where things usually start to go wrong – you find yourself deep in the woods without a map, only then realizing you should have thought about how to start social media advertising.
Setting your own objective should begin with considering what truly supports your current business. Generally, many businesses enter social media to be heard and seen, meaning visibility could be the goal. However, with a small budget, it’s crucial to focus on those customers who make purchases, rather than emphasizing brand awareness. Even though brand recognition indirectly influences sales, it’s hard to measure. A concrete goal that supports your business could be generating leads, quote requests, or sales.
Prepare Your Website for Social Media Advertising
Typically, the primary goal of social media advertising is to get viewers of your post/advertisement to click through to your website and take desired actions. For this purpose, your website needs to have everything in place so that potential customers can proceed through your sales funnel, get in touch with your business, or even make a purchase.
Reducing the threshold for contacting your business is essential on your website. With a small budget, you can easily add chatbox extensions that integrate with your company’s Facebook page inbox, making communication as effortless as possible.
Apart from facilitating communication between your business and customers, your website should also have some basic tracking mechanisms. The foundation of this is Google Analytics, which comprehensively measures the number of website visitors and their engagement. Depending on your needs, you can add more tracking tools on top of Analytics, such as the Facebook Pixel. The Facebook Pixel tracks website traffic from Facebook and Instagram, allowing you to create different target groups based on your website visitors. If you want to make the most out of Facebook and Instagram advertising, I also recommend reading how to install the Pixel on your website.
Different campaigns and offers can also benefit from landing pages on your website. A landing page’s purpose is to refine and narrow down the content shown to someone who clicks on an ad. Landing pages work especially well for campaigns and offers, as they allow you to clearly present the service or product you are advertising. You don’t necessarily need to include your brand story or other secondary information on a landing page. For more guidance on creating effective landing pages, you can find further instructions in this article.
Invest in Paid Social Media Advertising Rather Than Organic Content Creation
It’s often heard from social media gurus that unpaid content is crucial as part of a business’s marketing strategy. I agree, but for small businesses, it’s definitely worth investing in paid social media advertising, even with a small budget, especially if finding time or resources to maintain consistent and high-quality content creation on social platforms is a challenge.
Why is this the case? Organic content creation is an excellent way to engage your audience and interact with new and existing customers. However, the difference between organic content and paid advertising is that organic content can’t be targeted. Even though you can track the statistics of organic content and measure the conversions it generates, its effectiveness is significantly hindered by the inability to target it based on conversion or click goals. Paid advertising, on the other hand, sends your content through an algorithm that ensures it reaches the right audience, especially if your organic audience on social media is still modest. Additionally, organic posts lack retargeting capability, meaning you can’t selectively show posts to customized target groups.
Still, the power of unpaid content shouldn’t be underestimated in social media advertising. However, if you want to simplify the process and direct people to your sales funnels, paid advertising is the way to go, even with a small budget.
