Very-Small Businesses Use Social Media, But Spend Little

Very-small businesses, especially those with one to 10 employees, do not spend much money on their social media efforts. In fact, perhaps 42 percent say they spend nothing additional to support their activities, and perhaps 17 percent spend $100 or less on an annual basis, a survey by Zoomerang suggests. As many as 74 percent of respondents further say they do not employ anybody to manage social media programs.

None of that should be terribly surprising. One of the attractions of using social media is that, while it takes time, it does not necessarily require incremental spending.

Nearly half of the surveyed SMBs use social media to market to customers; of those, an overwhelming majority (86 percent) have Facebook accounts.

The top three favorite features used by both SMBs and consumers are photos, messages and status updates. At the same time, the reported "most effective" tactics for businesses to reach customers are wall posts and direct messages.  Zoomerang SMB survey:

The top three reasons SMBs use social networks are: connecting with customers, visibility and self-promotion. In other words, SMBs use social media for a mix of reasons, including lead generation and branding, loyalty and customer acquisition.


The top three things businesses want to know from customers on Facebook are customer satisfaction with products, customer satisfaction with service provided, and ideas for new business promotions. In other words, "how do you like our products," "how do you like the experience of buying" and "what can we do to convince you to buy more?"

How Do You Market an Intangible Product?

Some products, especially intangible products such as legal or health services, marketing advice, crisis management and other services, are very hard for buyers to evaluate, in advance of purchase. There is no physical object to inspect, so a potential buyer has to try and determine value some other way.

That's why credentials, furniture, street address, references and "experience" become proxies for value and competence where an intangible product is concerned. Even tangible products such as fashion items or vacation resorts have a huge and similar problem, namely creating a brand or mystique that helps potential buyers evaluate the product, which either is a means to another end, or an "experience."

Those are reasons why content marketing can be effective. Content marketing can help establish credentials, provide evidence of experience and knowledge and thereby reduce the "risk" a prospect faces when buying an intangible product they might not ever have used before, or which gets used infrequently.

By creating great, valuable content you are setting up your brand as a trusted expert, someone your target audience can count on. They learn that your company is one of the real experts in your industry. This helps builds your authority and trust level. Those are proxies for the product attributes potential buyers otherwise evaluate directly, in the case of tangible goods.

Content Marketing Tip: Focus on Educating Your Target Audience

Consumer Ratings, Reviews are Preferred Product Information Sources

Consumers are spending more time than ever using social media, according to Nielsen and NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company. And social media seem to be quite  influential. In fact, 63 percent of survey respondents say their "preferred" way of learning about products and services is from consumer ratings. 


Some 62 percent say their preferred method of learning about products is from consumer reviews. 


About 60 percent of consumers researching products through multiple online sources learned about a specific brand or retailer through social networking sites, Nielsen says. 


Active social media users are more likely to read product reviews online, and three out of five create their own reviews of products and services. Women are more likely than men to tell others about products that they like (81 percent of females vs. 72 percent of males). Overall, consumer-generated reviews and product ratings are the most preferred sources of product information among social media users.

How Social Media Impacts Brand Marketing

Coca Cola "Rules" Social Media

Coca-Cola ranked as the world’s top brand, with a following on Facebook of 34 million fans, growing at a monthly rate of nearly three percent, posting seven times a month, each garnering more than 235 comments and nearly 1,750 “likes,” according to Covario.

The top 100 leading brands on Facebook includes Hyundai, Disney, Bayer, HP, Victoria’s Secret, Best Buy, Samsung Mobile, Dr. Pepper and Macy’s among the top 10 brands using Facebook effectively.

Perhaps significantly, 35 percent of respondents say “driving sales” is the number one priority for social media programs, but 47 percent see the goal as driving engagement and driving brand awareness, and another 14 percent say they are “driving friends.”

Overall,  65 percent are using their social media programs, and their Facebook pages, to drive “soft” conversions, not explicit sales. Those results point up the fact that social media programs can have multiple goals. But the findings also illustrate the tension posed by social media. To the extent that the purpose is “community” or “socializing” or “fun,” does lead generation interfere with those purposes? If not, how can lead generation be reconciled with the other values? 

The study also has other implications. Traditionally, media efforts by brands have come in clear buckets: paid media (advertising), earned media (public relations, media relations, press relations) and owned media (brands acting as publishers and content creators on their own sites). 

The Covario study suggests top brands fund social media programs partly out of advertising budgets, partly out of PR budgets and partly out of new budgets. Both in terms of practice and internal thinking and budgets, social media is a new mix of outbound communications, marketing and sales promotion.

In many ways social media is a replacement for traditional advertising, public relations and marketing. In other ways it is a new blend of tactics. The rather clear implication is that competencies and skills also will have to change, both on the part of brands and other practitioners in the ecosystem.

At one level, the changes are "merely" about the ways brands spend money. At another level, the changes also reflect and contribute to a change in our understanding and practice of media. 

Historically, the growth of media has been fueled by advertising. If advertising support changes, so will media. In simplest terms, if traditional media has been supported by advertising, and advertising spending shifts to social media, there will be less traditional media and more social media.

Facebook users are “active” users, or using the application  more than four times per week. Less than 40 percent of Twitter users are considered active users, by way of comparison.

Facebook counts nearly 50 percent of its user base as power users (use the site at least once per day). A study done by comScore last year showed that Facebook occupies nearly 10 percent of the user time online globally. Users were spending an average of 450 minutes per month on the platform, compared to 230 minutes on Google, for example.

Facebook users number 800 million as of the time of the writing, more than any other social media platform. Twitter is estimated at 245 million users and LinkedIn, the key professional social platform, 120 million users.

Facebook tips for brands