Social Media Marketing for SMEs

Social media marketing has helped many small businesses and entrepreneurs gain awareness for their products and services. To outsiders who don’t understand its use, marketing on social media platforms might seem like a mysterious algorithm that seems to favour one profile above all others. However, the success of one business points to hours of careful consideration, planning and strategising to achieve those results.

Social media marketing entails distributing content on social media platforms to create awareness and interest in your product or service. Growing your audience and gaining followers is synonymous with building a potential loyal customer base. Your social media can further be leveraged to facilitate customer service, and posts can be promoted (paid ad boosts) to reach an even wider audience. This gives small to medium enterprises (SMEs) access to people who would otherwise not stumble on their business.

This guide unpacks what you need to understand the benefits of social media marketing for SMEs and how it can be used.

Research has indicated that more than 50% of consumers are introduced to new brands and products on social media. Further data has shown that roughly 80% of social media users purchase social platforms to purchase products. Clearly, using social media in your marketing efforts is an opportunity not to miss.

The first step in social media marketing is to identify the social media platforms to be on.

Identify the right social media platforms

It’s important to choose the right social media platform because your target audience isn’t always on every social media platform. The way a brand generates business will also be more suited for one platform than the other. Here are the most popular platforms and why it might be useful for a business.

Facebook

Facebook has over 2,9 billion active users that small businesses can reach. The platform allows businesses to create business pages that look similar to regular profiles but with additional, business-relevant functionality. It allows businesses to share posts, send messages and interact with users just like regular users, but it also allows them to run targeted ads that reach specific demographics.

Facebook’s business suite is run from the Meta Business Suite. From here, businesses can manage their posts, stories, marketing and advertising. The centralised tool can be accessed from desktop and mobile devices. It connects to both Facebook and Instagram.
Analytics related to these platforms can also be accessed from Meta’s Business Suite. From here, users see a snapshot of engagement with their content, insight into their audience demographics and across-platform spend.

Instagram

This platform is known for its highly curated visual content and brands that are extremely visual or products that can be presented visually do well on this platform. It further allows users to be discoverable using hashtags and location tags. Using Stories, Reels and Live streams helps brands engage with their audience and connect in a more personal way.

Although Instagram Business tools can also be managed through the Meta Business Suite, the app has powerful analytics on-platform too. The business insights indicate how the page as well as individual posts have performed. It also shows how much engagement, follows, or impressions were gained over time. Furthermore, it has a category for ad performance that presents sponsored or boosted content analytics.

TikTok

The youngest in the collection of social media platforms on this list, TikTok skyrocketed in popularity as it relies on creativity, content that is visually and audibly engaging, and is centred around entertainment. Businesses that succeed in TikTok marketing showcase their brand personality and story. This personal approach also succeeds in driving sales, especially through brand collaborations and social media influence marketing.

TikTok argues that its platform is performance-driven, giving users flexible costs, immersive experiences and ready-to-use templates. The short video platform allows businesses to create, post and advertise videos through the TikTok Business Centre. It also allows businesses to partner with other brands or influencers to enhance reach, simply with the tap of a button.

X (Twitter)

X is better suited to businesses that are looking to provide real-time updates, share news and announcements, engage in conversations, and participate in trending topics. It is also well-suited to delivering customer service through answering questions or queries.

The platform and its analytics have drastically changed since the company changed its name. In fact, in 2024, analytics are now a paid-for feature and businesses that what to see more from their accounts need to have one of the three premium subscriptions to access their data. The plans are:

Basic: Starts at $3/month or $32/year on web
Premium: Starts at $8/month or $84/year on web
Premium+: Starts at $16/month or $168/year on web
In addition, the platform also offers users the offer to use sponsored Ads.

YouTube

This platform is the leader in long-form video content, although it has added short form as an offering as a response to TikTok’s popularity. Businesses can utilise it for developing informative product videos, or educational videos on how to use products, what the benefits are, or sharing client success stories.

What’s more, what started as a video-sharing platform has now also turned into a platform where 2,49 billion users form an advertising audience. Unlike other social media platforms, YouTube doesn’t have a dedicated business suite for businesses. Instead, all users who create a profile can create a channel, upload a video and start an ad campaign. The platform also provides users with guidance on how to create a video that is campaign-worthy.

Pricing works on the same structure as Google Ads, whereby businesses set a price for the campaign’s maximum spend as well as a bid for how much it is willing to pay for the ad to be seen by the target audience.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is often seen as a resume-building tool, but in recent years it has proven itself to be a powerful networking tool. This platform is better suited to business-to-business advertising, or consultants and freelancers looking to showcase their skills to prospective clients.

LinkedIn aims to improve business’s pipelines by presenting them with a tool that advertises to a highly specialised audience. Ad targeting capabilities reach hard-to-reach decision-makers by targeting job titles, companies, and industries above other criteria such as gender, age and location.

The platform uses the bidding system for pricing ads, but they suggest that first-time advertises spend a minimum of USD 25 per campaign.

WhatsApp

WhatsApp has positioned itself as a powerful tool that connects with customers, provides customer service, disseminates information and helps business owners communicate with stakeholders. This uses a variety of tools such as channels, business catalogues, and quick-response features.

There are four plans: The Business Standard plan, Business Plus, Business Premium and Business Max. The Business Standard plan has a verified badge, Meta Verified support and a Verified channel (other channels are unverified and can be started by anyone. Furthermore, businesses can also link four devices to the account.

Business Premium gives users five verified channels and you can link up to eight devices. Lastly, on Business Max, you get 10 verified channels and you can link up to 10 devices.

Set up your SMEs’ social media account

After you have identified the social media platforms you are going to use, you can set up your profiles on each platform. These steps can be summed up as follows:

1. Download the social media platforms you intend to use and open the application

2. Sign up and create a business profile for your company.

3. Claim your company’s username or handle.

4. Add your profile picture or logo, bio, website URL and any other relevant information.

5. Create social media content and publish your first post.

Success with social media marketing doesn’t happen overnight. Consistent, well-planned marketing is what bears fruit. Here are the key steps in developing a social media strategy.

1. Research your competitors

A strategy starts with identifying competitors. This can be either direct or indirect competitors. Direct competitors are businesses that are similar to yours in the products they sell to a particular target market. Indirect competitors sell different products or services but still target the same audience as you do.

From here, you can assess the types of content that receive engagement from your audience.

2. Set social media goals and objectives

Next, you will set goals that you aim to achieve. Ensure your goals are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) so you know what you are working towards.

Goals can include the amount of followers you intend to gain or how many posts to produce.

3. Understand the target audience

The target audience will be the people that your business is aiming to reach through social media. This group is usually defined by collective traits such as age, gender, income, interests and consumer behaviour.

By understanding this group, you are better able to create campaigns that resonate with them and encourage engagement.

4. Create content according to each platform’s needs

During this step, you will create social media content that promotes your products and brands while convincing users to interact with the content. It will help if you create a detailed plan for the content items that you are creating. You can include a copy for the captions, hashtags to use as well as the optimised time and dates to post on the platforms.

5. Engage with your audience

A vital step in a successful social media marketing strategy is to regularly engage with the audiences. Reply to comments, respond to messages and react to posts that you have been tagged in. Aim to keep the conversation going in a respectful manner if any conversations start online.

6. Consider using social media advertising

Growing your social media marketing organically is possible. Yet, you might also want to consider utilising the advertising tools on each platform. Familiarise yourself with the advertising options available on every social media platform and see how you can use them. You might find that boosting your posts on Facebook, for instance, helps you reach a wider audience.

Social media advertising has shown itself to be much more cost-effective than traditional media, making it ideal for smaller businesses or start-ups that are on a tight budget.

7. Measure and analyse the results

To determine the effectiveness of a social media marketing strategy, you need to carefully look at the results of your efforts. Every social media platform has its own analytics tools that can provide an overview of how your audience interacted with the content, how your following has grown and how many users you reached (both organically and with promoted content).

By looking at these results, you can see what type of content performed well or what didn’t. Learning from this, you can implement small changes that improve your content and how your audience interacts with it. Don’t be discouraged when you don’t see results immediately, sometimes implementing changes takes a while.

Google Analytics is a tool that is used to analyse website performance and gain audience insights. The SaaS-based platform lets you measure traffic metrics for your website and categorise website visitors. You can measure the metrics by traffic type and geographical location.

Google Analytics has a free version for use as well as paid plans.

It’s important to note that although Google Analytics only integrates with your website, it can provide useful information about your social media efforts. Since it shows where traffic to your website is coming from, you can see which of your social media platforms sends traffic to your online store or website. Combined with the on-platform analytics of each social media platform, you are able to see which of your social media marketing efforts work or not.

Remember, the changes that you implement should contribute to reaching the goals you originally defined at the start of your social media strategy.

As we alluded to at the start of this guide, there are many benefits to using social media marketing in your marketing efforts. However, here are some important benefits thereof:

Understand your  customers better

Social media platforms assist marketers in understanding their customers because they provide a wealth of data about customer behaviour and preferences. With real-time communication, marketers receive immediate feedback on posts.

Establish relationships with your customers

Regardless of the collection of social media platforms you use, you are able to build strong relationships with customers. Whether you are a small business or a medium enterprise, all businesses can use social media for relationship building. Statistics show over 70% of businesses use social media for marketing, and 52% post every day. That’s why the emphasis has been placed on community building in recent years.

Cost-effective advertising

In comparison to other media channels, social media marketing is more affordable. You are able to reach a large audience with a pre-determined budget, whereas other media channels might not give you the same reach for the same price.

Social media marketing can improve your reach and brand visibility while requiring very little capital. This cost-effective marketing method is a must for any small or medium business to boost sales and create awareness for its products or services. Start with marketing on social media today by opening accounts on all the relevant social platforms and preparing a social media strategy.