Small businesses can expand social media presence on a tight budget

Before co-founding Social Jazz, a local automated social media management tool, Paul Baccaro was the vice president and general manager of a software company. He also was a small-business owner on the side, running a drop shipping operation.

“I was wearing many different hats,” Baccaro said. “So many that my own social media was falling through the cracks. I started talking to other small business owners and realized I was not alone.”

Social Jazz was created in 2021 with the intent of helping small business owners automate their social media to free up time to work on other parts of their business. It provides in-house created content that businesses can select from a catalog to keep their social media active and relevant on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and soon, LinkedIn.

It’s one of the many tools out there to help small business owners in the digital marketing realm — an area that’s even more important coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic than ever.

“People are spending more and more time on social media today,” said Baccaro, CEO of Social Jazz. “Having a social media presence is more important than ever.”

Matt Weaver, senior director of digital marketing for Mason Digital, a local company whose clients range from small businesses to larger enterprises, agrees.

“The pandemic has accelerated the amount of time people spend online,” Weaver said. “The amount of time people spend consuming media on their devices is growing and it provides opportunities to small businesses to show what they offer.”

The number of social media users worldwide is now at a record level — equivalent to more than 58 percent of the total population according to Hootsuite’s Digital 2022 report. These users spend an average of 2 hours and 27 minutes a day on social media and 58.4% of them buy something online at least once a week.

“A lot of customers and consumers are turning to social media as the place where they find something new,” Weaver said. “The biggest up and coming social media site right now is TikTok and we are telling clients to build a platform there.”

Weaver also says it is imperative businesses show up on Google searches, something business owners can figure out how to do themselves through self-learning modules if they don’t have a budget to hire a marketing firm.

The most important piece of digital marketing advice Weaver has for small businesses is to understand who their audiences and customers are so they can connect with them on an authentic level.

“A lot of businesses fall flat by not understanding their target audience,” Weaver said. “It’s not everybody.”

An easy and cost-effective way to do this, Weaver said, is to survey your customers to find out how they found your brand. “If your budget is tight, just asking that simple question: ‘How did you find us?’ will go far for your marketing efforts,” he said.

Louie Maier is the president of Brandmint, a Rochester-based full-service marketing agency founded in 2011 that specializes in creative work. While Brandmint mainly works with larger clients, Maier has a self-proclaimed “soft spot” for small-business owners because he and many of his staff come from families of small business owners.

“One of the most powerful words in marketing is ‘content,’” Maier said. “Content is king right now. It is so important, as is following trends. Instagram content is big right now and [you can create] it right through their app.”

As an example, Maier points to a recent viral trend on Instagram where small businesses made and shared seven-second videos of what they sell. The beauty of these short videos is that they weren’t polished.

“People want to see a human,” said  Larissa Town, account manager for Brandmint. “They want organic social media and the highlighting of the people behind the screen.”

Town also recommends that small businesses become familiar with geofencing, which is a location-based service by which an app uses GPS, for example, to activate a pre-programmed action (like a text message or targeted advertisement) to a device (like a smartphone) when that device enters a virtual boundary set up around a geographical location.

“It’s using targeted ads based on a person’s location and you can get as specific as you want,” Town said. “It’s an efficient way to utilize your ad spend.”

Geofencing is growing rapidly with the geofencing market share expected to increase by USD 2.21 billion from 2020 to 2025, according to the latest research report from Technavio, a market research firm.

Social media collaboration is another tool Maier recommends to small businesses. An example would be a small Rochester eatery that makes an Instagram video spotlighting an employee of the local coffee roaster they use. Such a video benefits both small businesses and provides a different lens.

“My mantra is community over competition,” he said. “Create a cooperative effort.”

Other small business marketing strategies Maier suggests are running paid, inexpensive, ad campaigns on social media sites to drive consumers to your website; building a custom audience on Facebook; utilizing Instagram Reels to create videos and paying attention to — but not getting overwhelmed by — analytics.

“It’s easy to get overwhelmed with in-house marketing,” said Maier who also noted that small businesses that may not have the budget to work with a marketing agency full-time can always reach out to agencies for project-based creative work, like videos. “Pick a few things to focus on and dig into those few things.”

Town understands first-hand the feelings small business owners can have. Before joining Brandmint in 2021 she was a small business owner herself, which was both creatively challenging and rewarding during the pandemic.

“We had to learn how to pivot, get creative and connect with our clients in other ways,” said Town, who recommends small-businesses use time management tools —  like Monday or Asana — to handle the increased demands of in-house marketing.

“When you’re wearing lots of hats as a small-business owner it can be useful to use a time management tool,” she said. “It’s a really helpful way to keep focused.”

Caurie Putnam is a Rochester-area freelance writer.