A few weeks ago, we discussed the shockingly low number of small businesses who are improving their sales through websites in, “How to Convince Small Businesses They Need Websites.” Now, Kelsey McKeon has shown with Visual Objects research that 38% of small businesses don’t even have social media accounts!

Many small businesses chose not to invest in a website because of the costs associated with creating and maintaining one. That’s where social media accounts usually come in. Social media sites provide a low-​cost medium to engage customers through and give potential customers some insight into a business. If a business doesn’t have either a website or a social media presence, it’s going to have a difficult time attracting new customers through word-​of-​mouth alone.

Measuring Success

However, Visual Objects found that 22% of small businesses who don’t have social media accounts yet are open to the idea. How can you convince small business clients to utilize it? By showing them proof of success for similar companies. Visual Objects says that small businesses tend to measure success through:

• Engagement: 24%
• Leads/​Conversions: 24%
• Clicks to Website: 18%
• Audience Growth: 16%

You can also let clients in on some tips to increase those results even more. The most common types of content small businesses tend to post on their social media pages are images and infographics (29%) and offers and promotions (22%). However, research shows that videos are more engaging and therefore result in maximum returns. Yet, only 16% of small businesses frequently post videos on their pages. If your clients post videos on their new social media pages, they’ll already be engaging more people than the majority of other small businesses on social media. 

Influence

Need more convincing? Well, 78% of U.S. adults are active participants on Facebook and 35.4% have Instagram accounts they use regularly. Additionally, 27% of American adults take action because of a video they see on YouTube and 23.6% react to posting on social networks that aren’t even ads. Additionally, within the last year, 51.9% of Social Networkers were driven to action by ads they saw on social networks. More information on social media-​based audiences can be found in AudienceSCAN on AdMall by SalesFuel.