Social media has changed the landscape of the beauty, health, and wellness industries. Beauty gurus and influencers fill our feeds with the latest trends and products. Since most people look to social media for advice on what’s hot and what’s not, could your small business reach new consumers there?
Many major outlets seem to think so. When we looked for advice on how to attract more customers using social media, here are a few of the tips we found:
- Business News Daily advises business owners to use social media for customer support by responding to inquiries within 60 minutes of receiving them.
- Forbes recommends posting regularly to increase brand awareness.
- Entrepreneur suggests the use of paid advertising to direct internet traffic to your online store.
- LinkedIn’s guide on content marketing says to keep a calendar of when you will make posts of different kinds to engage your audience in different ways.
Their advice on how to attract clients to your business on social media sounds reasonable enough, but we weren’t satisfied with this. We needed to know – does social media marketing actually work for the health, wellness, and beauty industry? So we consulted expert sources, and we ran the numbers. Here is what we found:
The Biggest Social Media Impacts on Small Business
Beauty, health, and wellness are big on social media, but does that make Instagram and TikTok effective marketing tools?
Research done at the Harvard Business School suggests they are. Studies show that 67% of consumers look to beauty influencers for information about products, while only 44% of consumers actually look to company advertisements. They also found that 82% of consumers of health and beauty products use Instagram every single day, meaning the products on their timelines are getting lots of airtime.
In other words, the numbers confirm it: social media influences sales. Considering how quickly social media platforms are continuously growing in size and scope, it’s easy to understand why. Based on the evidence, a social media presence is about the wisest investment a beauty business can make.
Why Social Media Marketing Works for Small Businesses
Social media platforms aren’t just useful for companies with large followings. There is actually a lot of research on why small businesses need social media, too.
Social media helps small businesses connect with a wider consumer base. The social media management service Hootsuite estimates that 4.62 billion people currently use social media platforms. That puts more than half of the population of the planet at your fingertips.
In addition to having a global reach, Hootsuite reports that social media marketing can be an effective way to reach a local audience, as well. Users seek out social media for local businesses to keep up to date with special offers, new products, and events within their own communities.
Social media has an equalizing effect on businesses and consumers: When users see a business post updates in the same timeline as their friends, they organically develop a sense of trust and loyalty to the brand.
That kind of positive relationship between social media and small business is well-documented. Buffer, another social media marketing toolkit, polled almost 2,000 business owners like you in 2019 and discovered that 73% of businesses found social media to be an effective marketing tool. A whopping 85% of businesses find social media marketing to be such an important facet of their overall marketing strategy that they actually invest in the use of third-party tools to manage their online presence.
So How Can Gina’s Platform Help You on Social?
Gina’s Platform is an all-in-one service for managing your small business’s online presence.
Your Gina’s Platform account comes with a free, professional, and simple-to-use website. Your clients can use this website to book services, view your portfolio, check for promotions, and add testimonials all in one place.
In addition to your sleek, new website, Gina’s Platform offers a full collection of marketing templates to help you increase your client base through exclusively designed digital tools.
Use our tools to facilitate customer communications. With mass emailing and texting, you can message your entire client base in one easy step. And if you need to reach only an exclusive portion of your audience, simply divide your clients into “folders” so that you can mass email and text the VIPs only.
Social media tools are provided to share your free website and profile. We even offer a “Book Now” button that you can add directly to your social media accounts so that new and existing clients have easy access to your services and products.
Your profile is automatically added to the Gina’s Platform website where it is exposed to millions of people seeking your services. You can add promotions to become part of “Gina’s Deals” to attract new clients to your budding business.
Once you have new clients, you can use our client relationship tools to help keep you connected and a part of your client’s regular life.
Social Media FAQs:
Does social media work for small businesses?
Yes, social media can be an excellent medium for small businesses to use to grow and connect with their consumer bases.
Why is social media good for small businesses?
Because it has a wide reach and a growing presence in many industries, especially the beauty, health, and wellness sectors.
What percentage of small businesses use social media?
According to a report by Visual Objects, 63% of small businesses use social media as a marketing tool.
Ready to grow your online presence? Sign up to partner with Gina’s Platform and explode onto the social scene.
Gina Rivera
Beauty Icon and Expert
Gina Rivera skyrocketed to success when the company she founded in 2007, Phenix Salon Suites, became the fastest-growing salon suite company in the beauty industry. With more than 300 locations nationally and international expansion occurring in the UK, Entrepreneur Magazine named Phenix Salon Suites a Top 500 Franchise list seven years running.
