How to Do Social Media Marketing for Small Brands: Top 7 Tips for Founders

Most small businesses don’t fail on social media because they lack followers. They fail because they try to copy strategies built for large brands with dedicated marketing teams. If you’re running your business yourself or with a small team, your social media strategy needs to look very different.

As a growing brand with limited visibility, if your goal is to gain more traffic, make sales and attract customers, one of the best strategies you can make right now is to figure out social media marketing for small businesses. If you can crack this then you can get ahead of a large number of other small brands.

But, don’t get over yourself yet. According to a recent stat by statista, over 90 percent of small businesses are using social media marketing as a key marketing strategy for their business. That’s a huge count. But that’s not the whole story.

Small business founders are getting on social media because there’s a market there. When you look at data that shows over 3 billion monthly users on each of Facebook and Instagram and more than 2.5 billion for YouTube, you realize social media holds a large audience and a huge potential market for new brands .

Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Small Business

One of the main benefits of strategic social media marketing for small brands is that marketing o social media can help your small business build trust, find new customers and grow in sales. It is also beneficial because the entry barrier is low, it allows better targeting and can get you in front of your target audience.

In fact, in growing markets across Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and most parts of global south, small businesses are embracing social media marketing because it is easy to start with just a page, delivers fast results when combined with the right strategy and costs less than conventional marketing. So it holds a lot of promise for these businesses.

But, that doesn’t mean social media marketing is delivering results for all small business owners. While a number of founders have cracked it, a lot of growing brands are burning through their funds on paid ads, spending time on content marketing for the wrong audience and getting very limited returns on investment.

In this post, I’ll be showing you what really works for growing brands on social media based on what I’ve learned from working with clients across diverse industries and gathering insights for more than 7 years. I’ll also show you how you can apply these tips to your business to get better results.

Set Social Media Goals That Matches a Small Business Budget

One of the first social media tips for small business is to set your goals but don’t just have goals for the purpose of having them. Get your goals right by setting goals that matches your resources as a small business. This is very important. This is the first tip I always start with.

Get your goals right. As a small retail company that is just starting out in Lagos, instead of saying I want to become the biggest retail company in the world, start with strategies to become the biggest retail brand in your locality in Lagos or Nigeria then Africa and then global. Start from somewhere.

This helps you in streamlining your resources to realistically deliver on your expected outcomes without a burnout. This is very important and it is different from dreaming big.

Whether its a paid advertising campaign, organic content strategy or a small ad campaign on Facebook, dream big but stay rooted in reality and work with your resources. Don’t go copy a business plan or strategy designed for established brands like Coca Cola, Nike, Dangote or MTN simply because you like it when you do not have the resources to deliver at that level.

Doing that will only leave you burned out, disappointed or discouraged when you fail to meet your expected outcomes.

Now that you know that you have to create a goal that will deliver based on your reality, you also have to create specific goals that are achievable. For example, you can say; I want to get 50 followers on social media in the next 30 days or I want to gain 5 new customers on Facebook in the next 10 days.

These are clear and achievable goals and these can now easily inform your business plan and strategy. Go head, write them down. Be as specific as possible.

Whatever your goal is, be sure you’re very clear about it from the outset before getting started because your goals will influence your daily activities on social media. And these activities are also going to influence your outcomes. Read this article to learn more about how to set goals the right way.

Create a Trustworthy Profile that Resonates

As a small business in a low trust environment, you’re not only going to create a profile to show up online. You’re building a brand and visibility anchored on trust because you are not well known like other existing businesses therefor you cannot afford to be vague.

So at this point, you want to get over to your social media profile and give it a touch that reflects the brand you represent and generally, how you want to appear online.

If you want to position your brand as a separate entity from your personal brand as founder then, try as much as possible to focus your business branding on the business itself, keeping your own founder brand separate except where it s necessary to disclose that for credibility or transparency.

For platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn etc., if you’ve opted to keep your small business brand separate then instead of creating a personal profile on social media, create a business page. This sets your business apart from your person.

If you’re just creating the profile for the first time, choose a username and page name that reflects your business. For example, if your name is John Doe and you’re running a business called “Baby Wears for Kids“, instead of using John Doe to create your social media pages, use your business name; Baby Wears for Kids.

Additionally, use the correct and uniform branding across all your digital platforms. This includes platform naming, profile image, banner, profile description etc. Where possible, use your own designed pictures and images instead of stock photos.

Be sure you set up your business description in a captivating way, listing out your product or services as expected. Most social media platforms allow you to use hashtags, tags and other optimization options to get more visibility for your posts. Use them judiciously.

Focus on Customers not Followers

As far as social media marketing for small businesses is concerned, you don’t need just any kind of audience, but audiences that can actually help you actualize your social media goals which is sales, in this context.

Considering that there are diverse kinds of audiences on each of the social media platforms, you have to carefully select your audience based on the nature of your business and the people who are more likely to be interested in it.

Let’s say you’re running a business that retails baby wears in Lagos. In that case, your target audience (potential customers) will most likely be nursing mothers and by extension new parents in Lagos. These are your potential customers. After that, choose the social media platform with the largest number of that audience.

For context, prioritize local audiences and audiences that are interested in your product or services. It is better to have 500 real customers following your page than to have 10 thousand followers without sales. So when you’re strategizing to get followers, target potential customers. This is one of my favorite social media tips for small business owners.

For example, while working with a new brand, there have been instances I asked the founder about the target audience for their content. And some will say things like “oh we’re targeting everybody”. But, that is wrong, you can’t target everybody as a newly founded small business.

Your goal is to target as much people that will be actually interested in your business as possible not everybody. And this people are located in a specific region. So, when you’re creating content for your Facebook or Instagram page, instead of targeting everybody, identify real people that will actually be interested in your business, target them with your content, ads etc.

Target these ones. Focus on getting them over to follow you instead of random people everywhere. It is easier to grow a brand with a tight budget if you’re very specific with your target audience, compared to targeting everyone.

Create a Content Strategy that Works

Create a content strategy that will deliver actual results, not just the optics. A lot of small businesses are more focused on creating shiny reels that look well synchronized like established business rather than creating actual results. I have seen lots of them.

As you read through this social media marketing tips for small business, keep in mind that a well curated Instagram page does not always translate to sell. A page that will deliver sales is a page that meets the needs of its target audience successfully.

That means that while creating your content strategy, you have to build it around serving or meeting the needs of your audience. Before you create a plan, find out what this audience needs and ho best you can meet these needs with your content. This is very important if you want to create a content strategy that delivers on sales.

If you’re not sure about the kind of content to use, consider looking up other similar or competing brands to understand what they are doing, the kind of content they are creating and the response from your audience. You can also use platform specific tools like the explore page on Instagram, search auto complete and hashtags on Instagram and other platforms.

As much as possible, your content strategy should reflect your business goals, your customers and their needs and your branding. Also, understand the preferred content format for your audience (Whether it is video content, written articles or audio and Images) and the best time to post, to get the best outcomes.

You don’t need sophisticated or perfect content as a beginner. You need content that is useful for your target audience. Content that meets their needs and they can easily access it because it actually gets to them.

PS: You don’t have to get your content strategy right at the first shot. Time and experience will shape your strategy as the more you create content and add more followers, you will get to understand what really works for your own audience and what you have to discard.

Share & Promote your Content

It is not enough to create and post content. As a small business struggling to get visibility, you have to get your content right to your target audience and customers, right where they are at, if you want to get a better reach.

While a bigger business with a large audience can afford to publish a blog post and go to seep, you can’t really afford that with your brand at this stage because you’re largely unknown with a limited reach. So, after publishing you have to share and spread the word.

Distribute it across other platforms. If you’re publishing a blog post for instance, distribute or share it on your social media platforms. Add context alongside the links in a way that is easily understandable.

Consider repurposing as well. If you’re publishing a video on YouTube, consider turning into shorts and reels that can easily be published on Instagram and elsewhere. Do the same for your written content too. Turn it into other formats and publish it elsewhere as well.

This distribution is important. When done well, it can drive incoming traffic beyond your primary platform.

Try Paid Promotions

Paid promotions can be a life saver for a struggling new business, especially in the early days. This is one of the best kept social media marketing tips for small businesses.

Paid promotion can get your business to drive faster visibility, improved reach and often times, returns on investment for your marketing effort faster than organic promotion but, you don’t have to do it like a big business.

Prioritize. For businesses starting out without a decent audience, you can consider using the paid promotion option to build your visibility from the ground up, especially in the early days.

For example, you can start with running an ad to build a targeted audience or followers for your Facebook or Instagram page. You can decide to keep this running on a low budget over a specified number of days.

Usually, Facebook ads of this nature do deliver decently on even tight budget when they are properly targeted. Learn more about how to run a Facebook Ad here.

As your traffic and visibility continues to grow, you can then switch to organic promotion entirely and run your ads only at intervals. And of course on the contrary, you can also run both organic and paid promotion concurrently, if you have the funds to do so.

I have written a detailed guide on how to promote your content in this article here.

Evaluate your Marketing at Intervals

Building a robust social media marketing for small business is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. To gain sustained growth for your small business, you have to consistently apply the right strategies. And that means you must know what is working ad what is not as soon as possible because unlike established businesses, you cannot afford to waste funds or scarce resources as a small business.

That’s why at certain intervals, you must identify the things you’ve achieved with your marketing strategy, and the ones you couldn’t achieve then find out the factors that were responsible for the success and the failed out comes. This is very important.

This is one of the most crucial social media marketing tips for small business you’ve learned today. Evaluating your marketing at regular interval gives you insights on where to make adjustments on your social media marketing plan where necessary and what to add or take out to drive better results.

Additionally, in times where there are changes in your goals and expected business outcomes, you have to evaluate your social media strategy and adjust it accordingly, to reflect your new goals.

Final Words

In a nutshell, building a strong social media marketing for small business is doable but if you must achieve this, you have to sop running your small business marketing as if you’re running an established business.

Take a step back and create goals that can actually work for you based on your resources. Create a trustworthy brand that people can listen to. Build content around the needs of your customer and overall, create a social media marketing strategy that can actually deliver for a small business. This is very important.

Always keep in mind that even though you definitely need a social media platform to grow your business, you do not have to be on all the top social media platforms. Choose what works. Prioritize useful content over great design. Choose an audience that actually love your product over fake social stats. Doing this will move the needle.

And you know what will move the needle even further for you? Working with a brand that knows its onions in the emerging economy and across Africa. Reach out to our team for social media management and strategic consulting to create platforms that delivers results or join our social media course here.

Now, it’s your turn! What’s your biggest social media marketing turn off? Drop your comments below.