Easy 6-Step Social Media Marketing Strategy For Small Businesses

Introduction – Easy 6-Step Social Media Marketing Strategy For Small Businesses

Today there are over 1.929 billion daily active users on Facebook and over 2.9 billion monthly active users.

Social media platforms with hundreds of millions of monthly users and even more than a billion monthly users are not strange in today’s world. 

Facebook has had over a billion monthly active users for the past eight years surpassing the 1 billion mark in 2014.

They are the world’s largest social media platform with Instagram in second place with over 1.2 billion monthly active users with newcomer Tik Tok following up with an expected 750 Million monthly active users by the end of 2022.

That is to say that it doesn’t matter the type of business that you do, the niche, or your target market, using social media is one of the most powerful and effective ways of finding and connecting with your ideal customer.

Social media is also a powerful tool for marketing and increasing the revenues and profits of your small business.

We will give you a powerful social media marketing strategy that any small business can use to start getting more leads, clients, and customers today.

We also understand that it can be a daunting task to put together an effective social media marketing strategy for small businesses.

That is why today we are going to give you a 6-step strategy that you can use to start getting more leads, clients, and sales from your social media accounts.

To get started we are going to give you a step-by-step overview of all that you need to do to start getting more leads starting today.

Our team here at Zeilhan is also available 24/7 with an effective online marketing strategy for every business of every size. 

Our Zeilhan Marketing Systems will take away all the stress and anxiety that business owners and marketing teams experience with getting your next lead sale or customer.

Our Zeilhan Marketing Systems are 12-month marketing strategies that are built to help your business achieve its goals over the next 12 months using 9 marketing products.

Our 9 marketing products are used to create a 12-month marketing system that will be designed to create a 1-year marketing strategy to achieve your business’s goals. 

These goals can be anything ranging from a 10% increase in sales, five more leads each month, or even a 25% increase in revenue this year.

The marketing strategy we will outline below will help you to get similar results but will be a general one not be tailored for your specific need.

To get a fully custom solution set up a free 30-minute online consultation and success strategy session with our team and we will design a system for your business’s specific needs.

Let us get started!

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Step 1. Choose The Right Social Media

Choosing the right social media for your business will be the most important step of the entire strategy.

If you choose the wrong social media for your business you run the risk of trying to use the wrong tool for the job.

Any success you experience will be small compared to the results you deserve.

To help you avoid this frustrating experience we will outline what the ideal social media platform is for your specific business.

Different social media have been designed to optimize for different types of audiences such as video viewers versus photo lovers, different people such as people looking to communicate with friends and family versus looking to meet new people, and different demographics such as teens, professionals, or vloggers. 

Because of this, it will be important that you choose the right social media platform to market your business.

For example, if you own a restaurant, bar, or grill then it will be important that you use social media to share photos of the meals that you serve, the ambiance of the restaurant, and help people to get a feel of the mood of your venue even without visiting.

That would mean that social media platforms such as Instagram and Tik-Tok might be more effective for marketing your restaurant versus a social media platform such as LinkedIn or YouTube.

We have written a complete guide on how to choose the right social media platform to market your business. 

This guide includes important statistics of each platform, the pros and cons of each platform, and even general tips on how to get the best result from using each social media platform.

By reading this guide you will be able to decide which social media is best for your unique business based on the type of business that you have, the best type of media for your business, and most importantly your ideal client or customer.

You can find our post on the best social media to use for your business by reading this article here.

Step 2. Choose The Best Content

Choosing the best content to post on your social media will be the next step in this master strategy to start getting more leads, clients, and customers from your social media marketing strategy for your small business.

To decide what type of content you must post such as video, photo, memes, statistics, daily vlogs, and updates or even tips and strategies, and the frequency that you must use to get the best results from your efforts we recommend that you look at the social media accounts of some of the leaders your industry as well as your competition.

How To Analyze Your Competitor’s Social Media Accounts To Replicate Their Success

By following and analyzing their social media accounts on the platform you choose to use to market your small business you will be able to see the formula for success on that platform and target audience at work right before your eyes.

As you analyze their content you should ask yourself the following questions:

1. Do they post more videos or do they post more pictures? Perhaps they post an equal amount of photos and videos and you need to balance both types of posts.
2. What type of caption do they use on their posts? Are they asking questions, making sly comments or are they just regular photos that have simple captions to brighten your day?
3. Are they using professional photography and text or are they using more relatable day-to-day quality photos and captions that will let them appear less like a brand and more like a friend?
4. How often do they post?
5. What are the common features between their most liked and engaged posts and the ones that don’t do so well?
6. What can I do to replicate their success and avoid the mistakes that they have made?
7. What are they not doing that could work for my business to give us a competitive advantage?

By asking yourself these questions as you observe and analyze your competitors’ social media accounts you will be able to quickly learn what is working for your industry and ideal client and how you can replicate that for your business.

It is more important for your success to have a plan like this to do what is most effective for your success right from the start than for you to start with no idea of what to do and hoping that you hit the ground running by some stroke of luck.

Smart people learn from their mistakes, wise people learn from other people’s mistakes. Be wise and learn from your competitors’ mistakes.

Step 3. Be Consistent

The number one key to being successful in posting on social media is that you need to consistently post and interact with your audience for at least 6 months to 1 year before you look for serious growth and results. 

That means that you need to commit to posting content on a regular basis for at least 6 months without seeing any results.

The reason why this happens is that social media is very populated not only with your ideal customers but also with your competitors. 

How many times have you found a show on Netflix or channel on YouTube that is absolutely awesome and perfect for you? 

You love it but then you realize it has been on for two or three maybe even five years before you found out about it. 

So you spend the next few days or weeks binge-watching all the episodes so you are up to date and are familiar with the entire story?

Social media is a bit like this.

There are many nuggets of gold out there but because there are so many options and everyone’s competing for the attention of the same set of customers it takes a while not only for you to get in front of them but also to get in front of them often enough for them to remember you and ultimately do business with you.

Social Media Marketing is a long-term strategy for your small business’s success. 

You must understand this from the start to not get disappointed by the short-term results or lack of them. 

It starts out slowly at first but as you build up momentum you will get better at knowing what to post and when, how to interact with your followers, and ultimately build such a relationship with them that they will even post your content on their account that represents your business. 

That is free marketing and social proof at its finest that will return massive revenues and loyal customers for your business.

Instead of visiting the social media account for your small business every time that you want to post your content, it would be helpful to use a social media post scheduling tool like HootSuite or Sprout Social.

By using these tools you will be able to plan and post all your content a week or month in advance by scheduling the posts in the app. 

When the time comes for the post to go live these tools will post the content for you even if you’re busy serving a customer, in a meeting, or working on creating future content to be posted to your account. 

Ultimately you could also hire a social media marketing agency Zeilhan to manage and grow all your social media accounts to help you to get more clients or customers online.

Step 4.Start Growing Your Email List 

Social media should be the plan B for your marketing strategy and never plan A. I know this is surprising for you to hear but social media marketing is very risky.

Here’s why.

It is very common when you start marketing your business on a new social media platform for your posts to get massive amounts of organic (from posting without paying) reach, engagement such as likes, comments, shares, and views, and organically and quickly grow followers on your account.

As time goes by the organic reach of these platforms decreases to almost zero.

That means that you post content and only a small percentage of your followers, maybe 1% or 2%, will see your post.

The idea is that the platform has matured and at this stage, organic reach is basically dead.

The only thing that you can do is to post more often, sometimes up to 6 times per day, while also paying to run paid advertisements on these platforms to get to your usual audience even if they are your followers. 

This is going to happen after years of work and money invested to grow your account to thousands or even hundreds of thousands of followers.

Even worse, changes to the terms of use and policy of the platform can also mean that your account gets deleted where it’s removed entirely from the platform with no warning or shadowbanned where your posts aren’t being shown without your knowledge or ability to reverse these changes.

Just like that in one night years of work and investment can amount to nothing.

That is why in this step of our social media small business marketing strategy we will stop to do the most important thing we can do as a small business owner or marketer; we will start to grow our email list.

With an email list, you will own all your subscribers forever and you have unlimited access to them without needing to pay. 

As a matter of fact, email marketing is one of the most profitable forms of digital marketing with the highest Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) among every digital marketing platform including social media.

The average ROAS of an email marketing campaign is 1:44. 

That means that for every $1 you invest in email marketing you’re expected to earn an average of $44 in return.

We have prepared many free guides and resources on how to use email marketing to grow your business that we will make available to you for free.

To use social media to grow your email list we recommend that you post a link in your social media account description or bio that leads to your email list subscription or signup landing page.

This landing page will be designed to encourage your visitors and social media followers to subscribe to your email list in return for something important and of high value such as a discount code, free consultation, or something of value that your ideal customer would pay for in a heartbeat.

The reason why you use this approach is that you want to give your ideal customer something of value in exchange for their email address.

This will increase the likelihood that they will give you their email address. 

At this point, you can use a welcome email as well as a drip and nurture campaign to quickly build a relationship with them and also convert a high percentage of them to high-paying customers and clients within a few short days of them subscribing.

You can learn more about welcome emails, drip campaigns, nurture campaigns, over 40 ways to grow your email list, and email marketing to grow your business using these links below:

1. 12 Powerful Email Marketing Strategies Your Small Business Need To Succeed In 2021
2. 14 Types of Email Marketing Campaigns for Small Businesses: How to Increase Revenues!
3. Email Marketing to Grow Your Business: 15 Powerful Conversion Tips
4. 3 Awesome Sign-up Drip Campaigns For Powerful Email Marketing Conversions

Step 5 Engage With Your Audience 

Now that you have a thriving social media marketing strategy that is connected to and growing your email list it is important that you remember that social media is primarily used for building relationships.

This is the primary use that you should use social media for your business. 

You should not use social media to post product photos and ask for sales or clients at every turn.

Instead, only one out of every five or even ten posts should be posted with commercial intent.

That means that only 10% or 20% of your post should ask your followers to make a purchase or sign up for a consultation. 

Instead, your posts should be geared at attracting your ideal client and giving them important information that will help them to remember you as a thought leader and expert in your industry.

This will help to build a relationship of trust with them that will help to increase your sales and revenues in the future. 

It will also establish you as a thought leader and expert in the eyes of your ideal client. 

The factor of trust and your expert status will ensure that you stay ahead of your competition whenever they are ready to make a purchase.

By consistently posting and appearing in front of your ideal customers you will get the 7 to 11 touchpoints that marketers know are needed on average before a prospect will do business with you. 

This means that it takes an average of 8 touch points (11 by some other’s estimates) or points of interaction before your ideal customer trusts you enough to hand you their hard-earned cash in exchange for your service.

By using social media to engage with your ideal customer and audience you will be displaying world-class customer service, care for your clients, and will be building a relationship with them directly and indirectly.

It will also help you to stay top of mind. 

Top-of-mind means that whenever they have a problem that you can solve, you or your business will be the first person they think of because it’s been the one that has been educating them over the past few weeks or months about their problems and possible solutions. 

There’s only one result from this: loyal, high-paying customers that love you and recommend you to their friends.

Step 6. Go For The Sale

The last step of the strategy will be focused on going for the sale.

Now that you have built a relationship with your followers and ideal customers, you have encouraged them to subscribe to your email list, and you have been replying to all their comments, and sharing useful information at every turn it is now time for you to capitalize on all your hard work.

The way to do this is not simply by posting pictures of your product or service to your ideal client but instead by giving them the benefits of choosing your business to solve their problems.

Let us use an example: instead of simply asking your ideal client to schedule a free consultation with you for your plumbing business you might get better results by posting a video testimonial of one of your happy clients detailing their positive experience with your business or even by showing a review of an unhappy customer from one of your competitors.

If you have a sale or special that is upcoming then you also want to promote this on your social media account to build hype and anticipation for the day of the sale.

The idea is that there are more ways to sell your product or service on social media that do not involve explicitly posting your product and yelling “Hey! How about you buy this new truck or bike or schedule a meeting with us,” at the top of your lungs.

You have to remember that at this stage most of your account followers already know who you are and what you do.

Even if they are a completely new follower on your account there are already months of posts and content on your account that will help them to understand who you are and how your service can help them.

At this stage, you want to give them the benefits of working with you, the advantages of using you, and the reasons why others use and continue to use your business.

By using social proof such as feedback from past customers, testimonials, and product photos with happy customers and other media that display the quality of your product from the perspective of your happy customers it will help your prospective customers to decide to choose you instead of your competitors.

As humans, we are gregarious creatures. That means that we are inclined to do what we see others are doing and believe if a lot of people are doing it then it must be good for us too.

Use this powerful psychological strategy to convert more of your social media followers to loyal high-paying customers that love you and will use your business for years to come.

Conclusion – Easy 6-Step Social Media Marketing Strategy For Small Businesses

We have outlined an Easy 6-step social media marketing strategy for small businesses for you to use to market your small business using social media to get more clients, more leads, more sales, and even more revenues.

Rome was not built in a day and neither will your social media online presence. 

If you are in need of more immediate results then we recommend that you use paid advertising such as running PPC ads like Google ads or Facebook/Meta ads, influencer marketing, or even affiliate marketing.

If you’re unsure of how to proceed you recommend that you schedule a free 30-minute online consultation and success strategy session with our team.

We will learn more about your business and help you decide what is the best course of action for you to market your small business to hit its goals over the next few months.

Which of these strategies are you looking forward to using in your business? When will you get started to grow your business using social media marketing?

Let us know in the comments section below.