You might think that your small business does not have the reach to expand beyond your immediate surroundings, but if you’re not on social media, how could you expect to do it? We’re not saying that a profile on social media is the end-all-be-all of effective marketing strategies for cleaning services; quite the contrary, there’s a lot of work and planning involved in turning your brand into a successful online presence, but the fact that it’s so easy to set it up should only motivate you further to do it.
So, why use social media for businesses? The following article lists the major advantages that being on social media as a business brings about, and breaks down how it can be achieved. We’re confident that we’ll make a good enough case for you to change the way you market your business from the bottom up, and embrace the advantages that the internet has to offer (even if you already have a web page set up). If what you’re looking for is a final push before you finally open up that laptop and get on social media, this is it.
1. You build brand loyalty
Perhaps the factor that made social media the most important advertising platform in the world is that you can engage directly and immediately with your clients, which also provides you with in-the-moment feedback about your content. A satisfied consumer means that potential customers will become aware of your brand on a positive note, which can spread further through word of mouth; in other words, it can generate thousands of leads in little time.
If done correctly, being on social media will also humanize your brand in your audience’s eyes. Instead of feeling like they’re being advertised to all the time, you can foster a healthy line of communication and motivate them organically to reach you. People love what they know, and there’s no better way for them to know you than social media.
2. You can target specific groups
Long gone are the days when advertising meant having little control over whose eyes and ears your message would land on. Social media saves you time, money, effort (and a lot of guesswork, honestly) by letting you target specific groups of people on a level that’s absolutely unmatched by regular media.
A Facebook profile, for example, is more than just a random collection of personal information; it’s a psychographic record of a person’s age, gender, how close they are to your business, political affiliation, hobbies, personality type, and much more. These are all metrics by which you can divide your audience and choose which of them would make the most promising customers, which in turn lets you build better and more effective messages for them. In short, targeting allows you to remain focused and more relevant with the people that matter the most to your business.
3. It’s still more cost-effective than other platforms
The key term here is “still,” since recent developments have shifted everyone’s focus on reaching out to people in a more organic way, and that has also changed the way marketers and businesses create and push their content. Social media, however, retains a pay-per-click model (PPC), meaning that you only pay each time a user clicks on your content. This makes it easier to focus on generating traffic in a more organic way while still relying a little on the PPC model that lets you reach more people through social media. If your strategy is smart and you keep it focused, there’s no reason why these small fees should skyrocket without providing any solid results.
4. It lets you diversify your content
Just because you have a cleaning company doesn’t mean that you should only talk about cleaning all the time. Despite people’s willingness to engage with your brand on social media, they’re bound to get bored if all they hear from you is the same beats about the convenience, quality and good prices of your services. What can you talk about, then? So many things! You’ll want to focus on targeting subjects that your potential customers are already familiar with, or things that they like to engage with, but how can you know which ones are effective? That comes from knowing your target audience; some may be interested in knowing more about the area where you’re located, while others might want to know some professional tips on how they can clean up the house. By showing interest in these subjects, you’re aligning yourself more closely to them, and they’ll begin to trust you more.
On top of that, you can do this via written articles on your website linked to your profile, promotional videos, photo albums, polls, and more. This keeps your brand fresh and people interested not only in what you have to say but also in how you say it, so get some variety on your company’s social media posts!
Learning how businesses use social media for marketing is a necessary step to take if you want to expand beyond a mere word-of-mouth basis of getting customers. Still, once you do, you’ll need to do things right to make a difference in your bottom line, so getting the right help to “set up shop” is also necessary.
