It's Time SMEs Focus on Social Media Optimization!

Some of the recent marketing trends effectively used by SMEs include social media optimization, mobile and email marketing and crowdsourcing for marketing support. Direct marketing practices like the use of mobile and email has picked up as effective marketing practice as well to generate immediate leads for SMEs.

However, since the emergence of Social Media, marketing as a term has evolved extensively. The available social media is mostly free in nature and fulfills the basic essentials of marketing and communication for businesses.

Strengths of SMO

The real power of social media marketing lies in brand building and longevity of the content the company adds to the social community. It efficiently helps to create a dialogue between the brands and the consumer. It also has the ability to gain important insights into the market that you may serve. Plus, social media marketing helps to improve customer loyalty, as it facilitates community building around a brand.

But for every SME, marketing comes second to sales as it's usually the survival game which takes most of mind space for these entrepreneurs. And hence, unless social media can have a direct impact on sales most SMEs will stay away from the same.

Strategies to accentuate sales

SME brands must identify causes that their consumers are passionate about, and directly associate themselves with these causes to keep the proposition simple, and thus impact sales. Businesses also need to provide effective local offers to the target audience, so that they have the opportunity to avail it instantaneously. Plus, you have to transform consumers into evangelists. Social media sites that conveniently promote sharing are the most efficient way to turn costumers into evangelists. These modes of marketing can yield greater results by connecting one's products or services with the online share-o- sphere.

Challenges for any SME business model

The most prolific challenge faced by SMEs is maintaining consistency in their daily operations; this maintenance of consistency in exploring the social media marketing possibilities eventually helps them to succeed by enhancing relationship with clients. Social media marketing offers this exclusive opportunity to SME owners to effortlessly engage with customers through digital interaction.

For both the above activities, one option is to engage with social media analysts who understand the space better and can help you set up the infrastructure and also manage the show on behalf of you. The investment in this space is wise as it allows you to keep focus on your core business while still using the medium to generate the desired results. According to a survey conducted by Daryl Willcox Publishing, 68% of SMEs use social media marketing for networking, 63% for attracting new customers and 61 % for raising brand awareness. The success of this mode of marketing can be proved by the fact that the number of SMEs using this mode of marketing has grown many times since 2009.

SMART marketing asset

Hall Thomas, a communication professional approached the Social Media ROI in a rather interesting point-of-view in the recently held DMA 2011 conference.

He focused on the fact that social media is an extremely effective mode of marketing communication and should be treated like a vehicle and not a destination. Social Media is not the stopping place, but instead the starting place for any marketing strategy. Marketers who are looking for an effective medium to promote their products can thus use it as an effective Power-tool.

It has been efficiently proved that if SME owners and marketers approach social media marketing as a SMART marketing asset, it can surely drive them on the highway of success. Social media marketing is that effective, and easily acquired tool for SME owners that ensure that they develop a solid customer base, as well as enrich themselves through convenient communication and interaction channels with consumers, be able to get insights into business channels instantly. Therefore, SMEs should be consistently focused social media marketing to effectively win an edge over their competitors.