Local Business Marketing Guide: Social Media

Local Business Marketing Guide: Social Media

When you’re looking to start a business, or even if you already have a business and you’re looking to improve it, one of the most important things you can and should do is get started on social media. If you do, you’re looking at thousands, hundreds of thousands, even potentially millions of new customers to your business. If you don’t … well then you’re going to have to hope that traditional methods are going to get new people in the door, but survey says that it’s not very likely (unless your entire market is the elder generation).

Social media is all about connecting with new people. It’s about finding a way to reach out to those who aren’t located anywhere near you. Whether those are people in a different city, a different state or even in a different country, you have the opportunity to reach out to them through social media and through new networks. If you continue to use older methods of reaching out to people, say the newspaper, the Yellow Pages, even flyers and billboards, you’re risking missing out on a large group of people who don’t pay attention to those things anymore.

How many people actually subscribe to the local newspaper where you live? How many subscribe to the Yellow Pages? How many actually even pick up those flyers that are left on their doors? The answer is, not very many. This is a problem if you’ve always marketed your products and services through this more traditional methods. Now in your parents’ generation this was probably the best way to reach out to people. You had to put it in front of them and of course everyone read the newspaper. Everyone subscribed to the Yellow Pages. But that’s not true anymore. In fact, the numbers for these physical methods of getting news and phone information have been falling fast as social media and online news start to take off.