If you couldn’t use social media to market your business what would you do instead?

Drive Founder Ann Hawkins has been using social networks since 2008 and writes regularly about the changes we need to be aware of as both business owners and citizens.

More and more small business are realising the dangers of investing so much in platforms they can’t control and are also keen to be less captive to their smart phones.

The scandals and uncertainty surrounding Twitter, Facebook/Meta, Instagram, TikTok, etc., may be the trigger for some people to think about this but lots of small businesses are spending HUGE amounts of time creating content that has little or no effect on sales, while they become slaves to their phones and get drawn into soul sapping habits like constantly scrolling, wasting time they’d be better off using for other things.

How else can you get noticed?

First figure out how many sales you need – how many clients or customers. For many small businesses this isn’t thousands or even hundreds. Its a handful. So competing for attention on a platform where there are billions of users (many of them political, fake or run by bot farms) makes no sense at all. Choose the method that best fits your needs.

Quick Solutions

Some quick answers to the “what else can you do?” question: (more details and links below)

• Use more direct marketing: build an email list and email offers, news etc.
• Get found more easily by people who are searching for what you sell. Note that AI has had a huge impact on search activities and SEO is very different because of this.
• Use blogging to keep your website relevant and up to date and give you interesting content to share with your subscribers.
• Ask for Google reviews.
• Get recommendations / testimonials and copy them to your website, use them in content, both print and digital.
• Explore print: flyers, brochures, news outlets, magazines, interviews, PR articles.
• Sponsor events.
• Give talks, be a guest on podcasts. Find suitable podcasts at  https://podmatch.com/ or https://www.matchmaker.fm/
• Go to trade shows, exhibitions etc.
• Phone people – not just sales calls but catching up calls, building relationships.
• Tele sales – works really if done by the right person who enjoys it!

The longer story

The problems with social media is not a passing phase. It’s getting worse, with more automation, more AI, more content being driven by controversy and more influencers being paid to market brands. More people are choosing to avoid it altogether so finding other ways to market your business is essential.

LinkedIn isn’t perfect but its the least risky option for B2B marketing right now. (See How to Use LinkedIn for B2B Marketing)

You don’t own anything on a social media platform

Most platforms state in their T’s & C’s (that few of us read) that everything you post becomes the property of the platform to be re-used or removed as they see fit, and increasingly, your content is being used to train AI apps. Your carefully curated contacts, articles, posts, videos, photographs and everything else could all disappear without notice or re-appear in someone else’s content because it’s being used by AI. There is usually no appeal.

When Facebook and Instagram last went off line for hours many small business say they missed out on hundreds of pounds worth of sales but had no recourse to compensation.

The very, very least you can do to minimise any adverse impact is to keep copies of all your important content somewhere that you control.

Invite people to stay in touch

Keep a list of all your important contacts – especially customers and enquiries – in a notebook, a spreadsheet or CRM. If you have an email address and /or phone number add those too. Anything else, like birthdays, the anniversary of becoming a customer etc., is gold dust.

Set up an email newsletter and invite people to sign up to it (they should always be able to unsubscribe when they choose). Use the newsletter for sharing interesting, useful or entertaining content as well as for direct marketing, special offers, new products or services.

Use your website as a powerful asset

Your website is like your online shopfront. You control and own everything that goes in there and can change it whenever you like. One of the most important things it can do for you is help you collect the details of your contacts.

A website is your property. You should own the domain name and hosting package – don’t leave it with a website developer or host or anyone else. Keep it up to date and working for you.

For help and information with websites, get in touch with us for recommendations. See Everything You Need To Know About Websites by Susie Tobias.

Create great content

If all of your on-line activity was geared towards bringing people to your website it would all be much more powerful.

You can keep people on your site and happy to share their details with all sorts of engaging content that you own. Blog posts, reports, case studies, videos, workshops, etc are all great.

For maximum impact your content should be interesting, useful and /or entertaining. Just like on social media sites but now it’s on YOUR site.

Word of Mouth

Word of Mouth is, always has been and always will be, the most effective marketing tool. It requires you to be good at what you do, honest, trustworthy, good at networking,  building relationships and generous to the people you know by actively connecting them to others – and by others doing the same for you. This works really well for members of Drive, the Collaborative Network, where we concentrate on building trust.

TeleSales

Not many people in small businesses like making sales calls but telesales can be extremely effective when done done by someone who is not only highly trained and experienced but really enjoys the process.

Tania Verdonk at Spirus Marketing is just such a person and is highly recommended by many of our members.

I hope that’s enough to get you thinking about doing less marketing on social media and more that’s in your control.  T

For more help on this please get in touch – our network has many talented people who combine their skills, experience, and expertise to help each other and come up with effective ideas and solutions.