Why Local Businesses Need Social Media
Local business owners may not think about marketing technology or statistics too often. Small business owners stay busy serving customers, but marketing tech combined with social media can actually help reach more customers and grow a business.
Local businesses probably already advertise in the newspaper, but today’s marketing tech helps reach customers via social networks which can translate to word-of-mouth marketing. According to Small Biz Trends, only six percent of small businesses use social networks for marketing. That means missing out on many new customers, including the massive millennial market because they rely almost totally on word of mouth. In fact, more than one-third of Internet users report visiting social networks to find brand or product information.
Which marketing tech should local businesses use? Small Biz Trends offers a few statistics to help with that question.
Facebook provides the most popular choice. About 32 percent of social network influencers report Facebook as the best social network platform. To produce the best results, business owners should use evocative images in their ads. Images increase an ad’s success, and are better than using large blocks of text. The most successful headlines are four words in length, and link descriptions of 15 words perform best.
Twitter, the home of the short and sweet message, carries more weight in purchasing decisions than television, according to 81 percent of Internet users. Twitter holds great power. It’s where 53 percent of Internet users first saw a product they bought. They also like to support local businesses by re-tweeting their content. In fact, 70 percent of followers of small businesses re-tweet their content. Even Twitter’s ads, called promoted tweets, perform well. They increase offline sales performance by 29 percent.
The last major tech piece of digital marketing, Instagram, may not have the users of Facebook, but its users more readily engage with businesses. Half of its users follow at least one business. The majority of Instagram users, 68 percent, regularly engage with brands. Per follower, Instagram pulls 58 times the engagement of Facebook.
The King Group helps local businesses join the tiny six percent reaping the copious benefits of marketing online. Our consulting firm analyzes the competitor’s online traffic and turns that knowledge and analysis of other businesses into a digital marketing plan that provides traffic growth for the client.
