As we adapt to the sudden move of commerce to the internet, we find ourselves in a point where e-commerce sites are about to lose their throne to social media stores. Social media is a powerful digital marketing channel for business owners today. Is it only for large businesses and corporate companies? Of course not. In fact, the importance of social media marketing can create an area where small-scale or local businesses can surpass their competitors.

What is Social Media Marketing?

When did social media become a marketing tool? It used to be a platform where we shared pictures of a nice lunch with friends, our daily mood, or the music we listened to. Here is the timeline: Social media has become indispensable in many aspects of daily life. First, small-scale social media boutiques entered our lives. Service industry workers turned their social media accounts into their own personal promotion pages. Over time, many small and large businesses and institutions opened social media pages. Because that’s where people were! The importance of social media marketing has emerged for this very reason. Brands need to be present where their target audience spends their time to appeal to them.

In this context, we can call social media marketing techniques that promote products/services through social media channels. As a digital marketing channel, this creates a great closeness between customers and businesses. This closeness can be in the context of satisfaction, wishes, demands, and complaints. It also makes it possible to make quick, effective, and mass-oriented sales. Therefore, social media management is among the marketing methods that need to be carefully implemented today.

The Importance of Social Media Marketing for Local Businesses

Local businesses can only be known by local audiences using traditional marketing channels. Growing through word-of-mouth marketing to reach out to the outside world will take a long time and require high success. On the other hand, social media marketing offers access to the world by breaking down national and linguistic borders.

The enchanting atmosphere of social media is an effective wizard for small and large businesses that make sales. Local businesses, in particular, are sellers who can use the benefits of social media most effectively, regardless of which sector they operate in.

For example, most of the popular food videos on social media are shared by local businesses. Many local and foreign travelers note the name of the business to taste these eye-catching and mouth-watering flavors or take a souvenir photo if the place is popular enough. Or a housewife meets a successful carpenter who makes furniture in her neighborhood through social media.

One of the biggest advantages of social media for local businesses, which is a digital marketing method, is that it eliminates the location problem. Nowadays, many business owners do not prioritize location when opening a shop, office or store. This is because they earn a large portion of their customer base from social media when traditional “sign advertising” is becoming obsolete. For example, a vendor who has gained fame with delicious street flavors or colorful jewelry on Instagram may have a store in a place you would not notice under normal circumstances, in the city’s back streets.

Therefore, business owners should not see social media as a suitable advertising space for big brands. Keeping up with the times and adapting to innovations becomes a necessity for small businesses. Otherwise, it becomes inevitable to lose customers in extraordinary conditions such as pandemics or simply because their competitors are very famous on social media.