Before the online advertising, there was print, radio and television. Although some might argue that print is dead, print is still in the ball game and holding on to dear life. Radio and television are still key players and so is online advertising. But the big shark is definitely Social Media. Yes, this small fish, which turned into a shark has taken over the world and has every business trying to “keep up with the Jones’” with social media campaigns. Well, every type of business, except the small”Mom n Pop” type businesses. I’m talking about the little hole in the walls owned by people who grew up almost during The Great Recession, or maybe even older than that. Well, maybe not that old, but close to it. I’m talking about the business owners who either don’t believe in advertising, or maybe still advertise in the yellow pages.
When I sold yellow pages advertising, I called on a lot of small Mom n Pop businesses and got the same response almost every time I made my pitch. “We don’t need to advertise, everybody knows us.” One of my rebuttals used to be, “Well what about people who either recently moved to the area or transients?” They’ll respond, those people ask other people who I’m sure know us.” During my 3 years of selling yellow pages advertising, I can count on one hand, how much mom n pop shop I sold advertising to.
Some weeks ago, I went to a small barbeque restaurant where I tried selling online advertising years ago and was unsuccessful and the first thing I saw was the “Follow/Like us on” their social media pages. This is a restaurant whose owner was probably in her late 50’s then and was not a fan of any form of advertising, let alone social media. That proved the power of social media, regardless of the size of the business.
Steps to a successful social media campaign for a Mom n Pop businesses:
• Convincing the owners of the power of social media and how it can impact their business.
• Create free social media accounts for the business
• Encourage customers to become social media followers of the business (Post pictures, like posts, share stories and posts, etc)
• Launch a paid social media campaign
• Track social media campaigns using tools such as Hootsuite, Google Analytics, TweetReach, etc)
The biggest myth most mom n pop businesses have, are that either they don’t need advertising, or that they will not be able to afford social media advertising. A lot of those business owners may not even know much about social media or how to use it, but the truth is that most of their customers do and they have to target new customers, who are mostly social media users as well. So it’s either they join the band wagon, or get left behind. The result of being left behind could possible ruin their business, which I’m sure none of those businesses want to happen.
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Category: Advanced Tactics