Social media has become an integral part of marketing for businesses of all sizes. For small businesses, it can be an effective and affordable way to reach new customers and grow their brand. However, with so many platforms and strategies to choose from, it can be challenging to know where to focus your efforts.  

My Business Entrepreneurship Facilitator Chris Mooney said that for small businesses, social media marketing is all about being strategic. While big companies have the luxury of dedicated resources and time, small businesses need to be more agile, nimble, and creative. 

Businesses can’t just throw money at a problem and hope for the best. You need to be smart about how you’re using social media to reach your target audience.  

“Being focused and targeted and using the market research data to guide you will mean that you don’t waste any more money than you have to on social media,” Mr Mooney said. 

The first step in any successful social media marketing campaign is understanding your target audience. Consider factors such as age, location, interests, and behaviour to determine which platforms your audience is using and what type of content they prefer, according to Mr Mooney. 

Not all social media platforms are created equal. Choosing the platforms where your audience is most active on will be important to enhance the effectiveness of your marketing. 

In order to reach the right person on the right device at the right time with the right ad, your desired social media advertising target audience should be highly specific, detailed, and based on real customers. 

“Social media is one of the most begrudged areas at the moment for small business and is one of the biggest waste in business costs,” Mr Mooney said. 

“It always gets back to the lack of emphasis that people put on market research. Even with an established business, they can waste so much money on social media because they haven’t actually surveyed their current customer base. They haven’t asked them what they like or dislike, they haven’t asked them questions that determine their income, their location and their preferences. 

“The more information that you can find about your target market, the more likely you are to be successful.” 

Creating a more effective strategy 

Once you have the information in place, it will be important to set the right goals that will not only help you prove your success but also help you figure out which tactics are working. This makes it much easier to build your social media more cost-effectively, Mr Mooney noted. 

This idea of engaging with your social media followers across every step of the funnel is paramount. 

No matter which steps of the funnel you optimise for, make sure that you’re listening and responding to your customers at every stage of their journey. 

This contributes to creating compelling content, engaging with your customers at the right time and generating sales. 

“Big organisations do this, and when they run the hypothesis, they’ve got about a 99% certainty that their advertising spend will be accurate,” Mr Mooney said. 

It will also be important to continuously evaluate and monitor social media targeting and campaign. Having a bird’s-eye view of your social media activity helps put things into perspective. 

Mr Mooney said the use of social media was also a matter of trial and error. Monitoring the metrics behind your campaigns in real time allows you to make small tweaks to your social media marketing strategy rather than sweeping, time-consuming changes. 

You can be reactive in the short term to get the most out of your running campaigns and then proactively use these takeaways to inform your next strategy overhaul. 

“If you’re going to change search advertising priorities on social media, don’t change too many things at the same time,” Mr Mooney said. 

“For instance, if you didn’t get too many hits with hypothesis one, then just change one variable and see if that works. Don’t go changing all variables because you’ll never know what worked and what didn’t work. It’s very important to be very structured in your approach.”