How to use social media to improve sales

Another local internet marketing company posted a blog entitled “Twitter and the Bottom Line for a Service Business” last July with the following question: “Can I use Twitter or any online social media to improve the bottom line of my “Local Service” business?” Chris Nastav at KC Web Specialists goes on to specify that this question is for small service-oriented businesses, and argues that successful social media pages are for product-oriented companies. My partners and I have also confronted this dilemma and here are a few of the main points we discussed:

• Small service-oriented businesses should create a generic topic social media page. This promotes the service industry, allows consumers to receive feedback from other users or the client and promotes the client
• Social media can be harder for a service-business because these businesses are often family owned and small – this leaves little time for Internet posts and blogs
• But small businesses have multiple advantages over larger companies
• Besides creating a generic social media page, the client must be taught how to analyze the social media data

Create a generic social media page

An example of this strategy can be seen on the Facebook Pizza fan page where, as of January 27th, there are over 4.7 million fans – but the Info tab is empty. Can you image how high the ROI for a small pizza shop would go if the shop created such a generic page and if the creator included a link back to the pizza shop’s Web site in the Info tab?

Now look at this page: most popular Facebook pages. If the Facebook Pizza page had 4.7 million fans (and had specified a URL such as Facebook.com/pizza, it would be ranked within the top 15 most popular Facebook pages! A small family-owned business could be competing against Michael Jacksin, Britney Spears and other multi-millionaires.

The trick is (here’s where WBC comes into play) is how to start social media page, what are the best marketing tactics and design for such a page and how can the creator post content to the page to continue the Fan popularity. As a test to this theory, we created a generic Facebook page called www.facebook.com/webmarketing. Similar to the Facebook Pizza page, the /webmarketing page will be used for marketing gurus to post links, advice and questions. As of January 29th, this page had one fan – that’s me.

Create an online marketing strategy

Small business owners need to specify where they want their company promoted and how all of these options are connected. The photos below promote a visual brand-marketing map. It shows how the brand connects to the consumer and how all components within the brand connection to each other – and back again.

It’s important to write down this type of a strategy. If you do, you can tell where a weak point within your strategy is and improve it.

Marketing advantages for small businesses

A December 2009 blog from Web site analyst blog giant, SEObook.com, lists multiple advantages for small businesses including agility (advantage to change tactics quickly) and being a niche market (no one wants to link to large consumer sites). With a written online marketing map, a generic social media page and the ability to move quickly can lead a small business into a wider customer audience and an increased ROI.