By Yana Yelina
In a hard try to boost sales, raise visibility, and attain a broad array of new clients and partners, small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) may commit errors that will lead to negative outcomes.
If you are a SMB owner and want to avoid unfortunate results and reputation damage, it’s vital to understand what’s wrong, detect typical mistakes, analyze them, and start seeking new smart solutions for promotion and generating huge sales.
So, what are those common mistakes?
Underestimating the importance of online reviews
If you still believe that comments and reviews posted by users of your products/services are not paid scrupulous attention by potential clients and are not able to influence the company’s reputation, you are under the delusion. The data from this report is a clear and convincing proof that online reviews are essential:
– customers tend to post comments and express their opinions (7 out of 10 persons agree if they are asked to do that);
– 84% of users have faith in reviews as much as personal advice;
– 90% of consumers read reviews to form their own point of view on the organization;
– 58% of users consider the star rating practice to be of overwhelming importance.
Taking into account the above-mentioned assertions, it seems reasonable to track mentions about your business and react fast, without deleting negative opinions posted on your social media account pages or business blogs.
To gain more visible results, you can allocate funds and use linguistic tools for reviews analysis to be able to find and examine all the comments and opinions on the Internet, thus, tracking your online reputation.
Excessive social activities
Social media sites are really popular among Internet users with Facebook leading the pack. That’s why it is a bright idea to be active in social networks and engage customers. Moreover, if your business is intertwined with massive sales and you own an e-commerce website, mull over the possibility of integrating it with social media using custom social network software.
However, try not to overdo being too social and too active. Analyze the size and sphere of your business, decide who is your target audience (people of which gender, age, location, profession, activities, intentions, etc.), choose your key social networks (e.g. Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn; Instagram or Pinterest). After that, concentrate considerable efforts on additional promotion of your goods/services there by conducting constructive and vibrant dialogues with present and future customers.
Exorbitant sales in social media
As a rule, social networks serve as an extra source of advertising and sales. Users usually check social accounts with the aim to get detailed information on the company’s activities, read original content, participate in talks, express their thoughts on a particular issue, or clarify something with a company’s representative via a chat.
That’s why strive to engage your clients and promote products/services through captivating and useful content (articles, case studies), create videos featuring some lessons, tutorials, or outstanding examples of your product usage.
Do not oversell, making your customers feel bored and change the direction while surfing different social communities.
Ignoring rivals’ actions
It is certainly a nice idea to aspire to outstand, make your business unique amidst the competition in the market. But while looking for new marketing strategies and methods of engagement do not forget about your rivals – the companies that offer similar goods/services and focus on the same target audience.
You can track competitors’ activities by carrying out a careful Google search and getting fresh information on their mentions on various websites and blogs. Beyond that, try to assess their social networking engagement by implementing an array of free tools and conduct a comparative analysis of your and your opponents’ social media usage effectiveness.
The article has mentioned only few but common mistakes made by SMB owners. Their number may be even higher depending on the sphere and type of a business. All in all, try to follow the above-mentioned tips and save your company from a crash.
Yana Yelina is a website design and development expert at EffectiveSoft, a custom software development company with 250+ specialists who boast expertise in different business domains (healthcare, trading and finance, logistics, e-commerce, etc.). You can reach Yana at contact@effectivesoft.com or connect with her via LinkedIn or Twitter.
