Small Business
Nowadays, small businesses are preferring social marketing to help increase their business, their brand’s reach, improve sales as well as expand their professional network. Social marketing can help you promote your own business, as the business concept is tightly related to social marketing. More than that, social marketing solutions help small businesses launch their campaigns, grow followers, boost engagement and increase sale. That is why, social marketing help you promote your small business.
Social Marketing
Social marketing is the application of commercial marketing technologies to the planning, execution, analysis and evaluation of programs meant to influence the voluntary behavior of target audiences. The aim of social marketing is to improve people’s personal welfare such as small businesses. The main task of social marketing is to influence behavior for individual and social good. The difference between social and commercial marketing lies in the fact that social marketing focuses on outcomes that improve social and personal welfare. Social marketing also includes voluntary exchange which means providing a good or service that is both in the consumers’ and in the marketers’ best interest.
The strong points of social marketing are linked to the five basic principles. The first principle is focusing on behavior; social marketing focuses on how people use the product, not on the simple selling of the product. The second principle is prioritizing consumers’ benefits; in this case, the stress lies on identifying the benefits, not on the turnover. Maintaining a marketing perspective is a principle that deals with the consumers’ orientation in relation to the small business (the price of the product, the way in which it can be used and the place where the consumer can find the product). The fourth principle is determining the marketing mix (product, price, place and promotion). The last strong point is classifying audience into groups according to age, sex, and environment.
Social Marketing Tips
In the future, social marketing and commercial marketing should work together in order to improve small businesses. Social marketing can make use of communication techniques in order to improve the relationships between marketers and consumers. Emphasis should be laid first of all upon safety of customers and secondly on the turnover of commercial world and environment. There are several social marketing tips for small businesses:
- Use social marketing to sell products;
- Use large networks to improve customer relationship;
- Expand professional networks;
- Improve business customer support;
- Manage brand online reputation.