The Tray Way: Should Local Businesses Utilize Facebook? Yes, but....

Small, local businesses are always aiming to cut costs whenever possible, and with the advent of cost-effective social media options, the marketing budget is a common place to target. However, new research has indicated that shifting focus completely towards this new medium is not as beneficial to a local company.

In correlation with the newsfeed change on Facebook, EdgeRank Checker recently reported that popular Pages (those with more than 100,000 fans) have been generating a great deal more engagement (27.8%), smaller Pages (those with less than 5,000 fans) are generating about the same level of engagement. However, those Pages with less than 1,000 fans have seen an average engagement drop of 11.6%.

Inside Facebook presented it this way:

Most major brands tend to have at least 10,000 fans, so this may come as good news — they’re receiving a lot more Likes and comments. However, fledgling brands and local businesses that only appeal to a limited audience may find they’re receiving fewer impressions and engagement. This reduces return on their Facebook marketing investment and make their posts less likely to be reshared, a core way of organically growing their fan counts.

What does this mean for businesses trying to gain business in their immediate geographic area? From our perspective, we have two thoughts:

1. Social media is a great marketing tool for small businesses to formalize their brand (especially for the money it costs) and hit a target market, but putting all your eggs in the social media basket can potentially have a less than remarkable result, even for the investment. Tray's philosophy has always been to recommend an integrated approach, combining new media with more established, traditional media (e.g. direct mail). This actually offers local businesses a significant advantage over larger competitors because they have the necessary local insight.
2. To get all the benefits out of social media as a small business, it is worth consulting marketing experts that know where the gaps should be filled. The statistics in this report are accurate, but it is an average, meaning there are Pages that have seen growth. It is likely that those businesses have had experts in their corner to craft messages and plan campaigns that have worked.

Local businesses should absolutely not shy away from Facebook or other social media channels, but think of the smartest way to utilize the advantages you have. You know the community you operate in better than most, so think of the best mix of what your demographics want to hear and how they want to hear it.

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The Tray PML Way is the blog for Tray, experts in the printing, mailing, logistics and promotional products. You can learn more about our organization's capabilities by visiting our website, as well as our Facebook and Twitter pages.