Low-Cost Social Media Marketing Tactics for Small Businesses

Small business owners are constantly searching for ways to attract new customers.

While there are various marketing strategies available for small businesses, only a few of them can help you effectively build customer relationships as social media does.

By 2028, statistics suggest that there will be more than 6.05 billion users on social networks worldwide, and the numbers will keep growing.

Image via Statista

For smaller companies, social media represents an opportunity to develop brand awareness, build connections with customers and prospects, and amplify sales.

The question is: How can you create and implement a successful social media strategy without a big marketing budget?

We’ll tell you how.

Here’s your guide to low-cost social media marketing.

7 Low-Cost Social Media Marketing Tactics for Small Businesses

Many people check out their favorite social media platforms every day, looking for opportunities to connect with friends, family, and brands. The key to low-cost social media marketing success for small companies lies in figuring out how to leverage the right strategies and
social media marketing tools.

Let’s take a look at the tactics you need to succeed in social media marketing.

1. Research Your Audience

The first step to successful low-cost social media marketing efforts is to understand your audience.

Having a good understanding of your audience will ensure that you can create targeted campaigns to specifically reach people who are the most likely to buy your products and services.

Good targeting increases your chances of driving conversions and reduces the amount of money you waste interacting with people who won’t convert.

If you already have some information about your audience based on people who bought your products or visited your website in the past, you can use those insights to build a buyer persona. If you don’t have much data, try to analyze your competitors on social media to get insights about the consumers they target. You can also examine marketplace benchmarks for handy information.

Creating a user persona will give you a complete overview of the kind of customers you want to reach on various social media platforms. Some of the information you’ll need about your target audience includes:

• Demographic data: Age, gender, etc.
• Location: Where your customers are
• Likes: What they enjoy doing, their hobbies, interests, and favorite brands
• Dislikes: What they dislike about other companies
• Behavior: How much time they spend online and which channels they use

Having a good overview of your target audience will make it easier for you to target the right people through your social media campaigns or via influencer marketing on Facebook and Instagram. It can also give you an idea about which channels you should leverage to get a better ROI.

For instance, if a majority of your customers are under the age of 19, then TikTok is likely to be a good bet. To target people aged 25-34, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) can be better choices.

2. Choose Your Social Platforms

There’s a social platform to suit every kind of customer and brand.

You may need to be active on multiple social media channels to ensure that you can reach and engage your target audience. However, it’s important to know which channels are most likely to assist you in generating leads through social media marketing.

For low-cost social media marketing, you need to choose your platforms wisely and run highly targeted campaigns to establish a social media presence. We’re sure that you won’t want to waste money on running ad campaigns on channels that your ideal customers aren’t going to visit.

To figure out which platforms you should focus on, think about the following:

Image via Attrock

Your Brand’s Image

As a social media manager, what kind of reputation are you trying to build for your business?

If you want to be seen as fun and young, then TikTok and Instagram might be good choices. If you want to create a professional B2B image, you should try using LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

Your Competitors

Which channels are your competitors using actively? Analyzing your competitors’ social media profiles and marketing strategies is a good way to determine where they’re focusing their efforts to generate leads.

Your Products and Services

If you sell insurance plans, visual platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest are less likely to drive good results for your brand. If you sell makeup products, then creating video tutorials on YouTube and Instagram is likely to attract your ideal buyers.

With multiple social platforms to choose from, here’s a quick insight into the most popular options available in the market:

• LinkedIn: The most popular platform for professionals with over 67 million company pages and 1 billion members, LinkedIn is ideal for B2B companies.

• Facebook: The social media platform with the broadest reach, Facebook offers excellent targeting opportunities and helps you reach a wide section of consumers.

• Instagram: The ultimate visual platform, Instagram has more than 1.68 billion users who frequently interact with brands as well.

• X (formerly Twitter): The news platform, X is ideal for connecting with people through quick announcements and news commentary.

• TikTok: This video platform is ideal for you if you’re trying to reach a younger audience or build a fun personality for your brand.

3. Create a Content Strategy

Once you’ve identified the best channels to use for social media marketing, you should build a content strategy next.

Having a content marketing strategy in place will help you ensure that you’re building and nurturing good connections with your target audience. The better planning you do, the easier it will be to improve your conversion rate.

Your content strategy should include a plan to create different types of content. This includes writing informative blog posts regularly so that you always have valuable content to share on social media and drive traffic to your website.

You should also plan what type of content you’re going to create for each of your social media profiles. For Instagram, you may decide to publish 3-4 photos a week along with a handful of Instagram Stories and Reels, and the occasional IGTV video.

Creating a solid content strategy will help you ensure that you’re taking full advantage of all of the content formats and features available on each social media platform.

To design a successful content strategy, keep the following tips in mind:

Image via Attrock

Decide What You’re Going to Share

Your social media accounts need to be more than just platforms meant to advertise your products.

You should focus on creating high-quality content that can entertain, inform, and educate your audience. Make sure that you’re posting plenty of engaging content like “how-to” videos, mini blog posts on LinkedIn, tutorials, guides, and actionable tips.

Keep an Eye on Your Competitors

Take inspiration from your competitors who are acing the game of low-cost social media marketing. Using social listening for content marketing can prove to be really helpful.

If they’re using certain kinds of content on specific platforms, should you leverage them too? Which types of posts are driving maximum engagement for them? Is there anything your competitors aren’t doing but you can do to stand out?

Adapt Your Content to Suit the Platform

Every popular social media platform supports a different kind of content. Instagram is ideal for sharing photos and videos. TikTok only supports a specific kind of video content and Twitter is all about shorter posts.

While repurposing content is possible, you can’t just copy-paste your content from one platform to the next. You need to optimize it for each platform.

Constantly Collect Data

You should audit your social media posts and engagement activities to test your ability to achieve your goals and tracking your campaign performance.

You should keep an eye on metrics like reach, follower growth, and engagement levels. You can use the analytics or the analytics tools available on different social channels to see which of your posts are driving maximum engagement.

4. Plan a Content Posting Schedule

Many of the social media marketers have one common question: whether scheduling instagram posts affect engagement?

Well, it goes without saying that if you have a business to run and customers to support, you won’t always have the time to create and publish unique content. The good news is that scheduling does not negatively affect engagement.

Moreover, If you’re not taking the time to plan your social calendar in advance, you’re inviting problems.

Planning your content calendar in advance is a great way to design campaigns around specific times of the year and boost sales. There are many tools and content strategy planning templates to help you plan the content and allow you to schedule posts for specific days and times, and knowing the best times to post on social media for engagement can significantly enhance your strategy.

You can use the following social media marketing tools to schedule your posts:

Buffer

One of the best-known tools for social media marketing and scheduling, Buffer is trusted by 140,000 users. It is an intuitive platform, ideal for publishing content in a queue, creating and organizing content calendars, and analyzing your campaign’s performance.

With a free forever plan, it’s easy for small companies to get started. You can also leverage their paid plans, which cost anywhere from $6-$120 per month.

Image via Buffer

Hootsuite

Another popular choice that works with a wide range of social platforms, Hootsuite makes managing your content easier. The all-in-one platform allows you to schedule your social posts, track campaign outcomes, and even find out when people are talking about your brand online.

You can either use their free plan or subscribe to their paid versions to get access to advanced features.

Image via Hootsuite

SocialPilot

As one of the best social media management tools for small businesses, SocialPilot has 13,000+ customers across various industries. From content publishing and scheduling to collaboration and engagement, this is an all-in-one low-cost social media marketing solution.

SocialPilot’s AI Assistant will not only streamline engagement but can also help generate creative campaign ideas. Advanced analytics and reporting will give you an edge over your competitors to enhance your social media performance.

The platform doesn’t provide a free plan. However, it offers a feature-rich 14-day free trial on all its paid plans. These plans could cost you anywhere from $30-$200 per month.

Image via SocialPilot

5. Work with Influencers in Your Niche

Influencer collaborations are probably one of the best mediums to increasing the ROI of your low-cost social media marketing efforts. There are many different kinds of influencers out there who can help you improve your content strategy, enhance your online reputation, and attract new customers.

Notably, influencer marketing isn’t limited to working with famous celebrities. Partnering with micro-influencers (smaller accounts with a few thousand followers) and knowing about the influencer marketing trends can prove to be just as valuable.

In fact, influencers with smaller followings tend to generate more views and engagement than celebrities in the long run. Also, it is less expensive to work with micro-influencers, which means that you can also partner with multiple influencers at the same time to drive the best results.

However, it is always a good idea to know about the influencer marketing costs before partnering with them to ensure that the ideal marketing budget is always met.

Here’s an example of an influencer disclosing her partnership with the intimate apparel brand, Aerie:

Image via Instagram

To leverage influencers for your social campaigns, the first thing you need to do is to create a solid influencer marketing strategy. It’s important to find the right influencers who already speak to your target audience.

There are various influencer marketing tools out there to help you with influencer discovery, selection, and vetting, which include:

Influence Grid

One of the most popular TikTok influencer discovery platforms, Influence Grid allows you to sort through potential collaborators based on metrics like likes per video, views, follower count, and engagement levels.

You can even see which country your potential influencer is popular in so that it’s easier to find the right people to work with.

Image via Influence Grid

BuzzStream

Though it started as a link-building tool, BuzzStream quickly emerged as a relationship-building solution for companies that want to search for influencers. You pay a monthly subscription fee to search for collaborators using keywords and get access to their contact details.

6. Create High-Quality Content

The content you create for your social campaigns needs to be tailored to the interests of your target audience and the platform you’re using.

Publishing high-quality content will help you ensure that your customers keep coming back. While customers do follow brands on social media to learn about new products and services, they’re mostly looking for information, entertainment, and fun ways to spend their time.

You should optimize your content for the platforms you choose to promote your brand on.

Instagram

Instagram is a highly-visual platform that allows you to post videos, photos, and other graphics to promote your products and services.

It’s worth looking with the best designing tools that can help you to enhance your visual content such as Photoshop and Canva. Remember to write captions that can engage your audience and include hashtags that can help boost its reach.

Image via Canva

Facebook

Facebook allows you to publish all kinds of content, varying from links to your latest blog posts to photos and videos. It’s best to experiment with a range of content types here so that you can connect with a wider audience.

You can also leverage the Facebook marketing tools to get the best results from your posts. These tools can help you with almost everything — from content creation to publishing to analytics.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a professional network, mostly designed for B2B brands and professionals looking for networking opportunities.

You can post links to curated content, connect with customers through thought leadership articles, and share your blog posts to grow organically on LinkedIn. You can also create polls and surveys to gather insights about your industry and clients.

TikTok

TikTok is the go-to social media platform for people under the age of 19. It allows you to reach your customers through hashtag challenges and fun video content.

Make sure that you get your hashtags right and remember that TikTok fans love authentic content.

Pinterest

Pinterest is a fantastic place to share visual content, how-to guides, and infographics. If you want to share visual content that’s a bit more comprehensive than the snaps you find on Instagram, Pinterest is a good choice.

7. Engage Your Social Media Audience

Finally, one of the most important things you need to do on any social media channel is to engage your audience.

It’s not enough to post valuable content and wait for people to buy from you. You need to connect with your existing customers and prospects on social media.

Ask questions, host polls on your Instagram Stories, and respond to all of the comments on your posts. The more you engage with your audience, the higher your chances of building strong connections with them.

Here are a few ways to boost user engagement on social media:

Image via Attrock

Run Competitions

Run a contest, asking people to tag a friend or share your profile on their Stories in order to win a prize. This will help you generate buzz about your brand and products and help you create user-generated content (UGC).

In the example below, Hallmark ran a contest to increase post engagement:

Image via Instagram

Branded Hashtags

Use a branded hashtag to encourage your customers to create user-generated content for your brand. You need to know how to use the hashtags to get the best out of them. You may reward your followers for their contributions by choosing the best picture of the day and featuring it on your official account.

Daniel Wellington encourages people to take photos of them with their watch collection and post them using the hashtag, “#danielwellington.” The brand features the best ones under their #DWPickoftheDay campaign to boost brand awareness and user engagement.

Image via Instagram

Ask Questions

Asking questions and hosting polls is a brilliant way to connect with your followers. You will get the opportunity to learn something about your customers and their preferences.

Live Videos

Live videos on Facebook and Instagram allow you to chat with your customers on almost a face-to-face basis. You can run Q&A sessions and even invite industry experts to answer your audience’s questions.

Captions

Remember that your captions aren’t just an opportunity to attract people using relevant hashtags. You can also use them to improve engagement.

You should write compelling captions and include a call-to-action to ask people to take an action. You can ask users to visit your website or encourage them to buy a product before a specific discount code expires.

Image via Instagram

FAQ

Q1. Is social media marketing really low-cost? 

A. Yes, social media marketing is an economical way to reach and engage your target audience. You can create impressive social pages for your brand with little to no cost. On these pages, you can run campaigns, contests, giveaways, and more to interact with your followers and build a positive brand presence.

You only have to spend money when you decide to run ads on different platforms for targeted engagement.

Q2. Can I do social media marketing for free? 

A. Yes, you can manage your social media marketing strategies for free. Moreover, there are good SMM tools that allow you to schedule posts and create and run campaigns with their free plan.

The basic features included in these free plans are enough for a small business to get started.

Q3. Why is social media marketing necessary for small business owners? 

A. Social media marketing is quintessential for small business owners for the following reasons:

• It’s an economical option to build your brand presence.
• It facilitates high-quality engagement.
• It generates inbound traffic.
• It helps gather invaluable insights about your performance as well as customer preferences and sentiments.

Q4. What are the best social media marketing tools for small businesses? 

A. Some of the low-cost social media marketing tools you can consider are:

• Buffer
• Hootsuite
• SocialPilot

Q5. What tools can I use to create free content for social media?

A. Small businesses can create professional and branded content for their social media campaigns using free and low-cost tools like Canva, Adobe Express, Visme, PicMonkey, Stencil, and many more.

Leverage These Low-Cost Social Media Marketing Strategies Today!

Social media is a fantastic tool for building brand awareness and unlocking sales opportunities.

Just because you’re a small business, doesn’t mean that you have to miss out on the advantages that social media marketing offers. With the low-cost social media marketing tips mentioned above, you can generate great results even on a low budget.

Do you need help running social media campaigns? Feel free to connect with our social media experts today.