The average small business owner most likely has a Facebook presence and consistently uses it for both social engagement and marketing. But not many have any presence on Twitter. This is not surprising seeing as Twitter is somewhat different and a bit difficult to understand for some business owners.

It is not often surprising to hear them say things like “Facebook I understand, but how am I supposed to get my messages across to my audience in 140 characters or less. I might as well stick to SMS”. Truth is Twitter has a bit of learning curve –you’ll need to understand the “@’s”, hashtags, RT’s- but it’s nothing you can’t learn in 5-10 minutes.

Considering that you can take advantage of the platform’s almost 400 million users, it makes the 5-10 minutes of extra effort worth it. That said, Twitter should be included in your marketing mix, just like Facebook. The benefits are quite considerable.

Cost Effective Marketing Tool

Unlike the big companies, small business owners typically have a very limited budget. This means that most owners are always looking for ways to cut back on their expenses. Using Twitter as part of your marketing arsenal is one of such ways.

Marketing your business on Twitter is cost effective in the sense that it doesn’t have to cost you anything. It’s free to open an account, follow people and have them follow you back, tweet and retweet among other things. However, if you don’t have the time to wait until you have a sizable audience, you can get a Promoted Account for your paid promotions. And the best part is the paid option is that it’s affordable and within the reach of most business owners.

Effective Social Engagement Tool

In the past, communication with your target audience used to cost a ton of money. Companies typically allotted sizable budgets for focus groups and surveys meant to help them spot and identify new trends and customers’ shifting needs and wants.

Nowadays, you can do that with something as simple as Twitter. Not just that, businesses are now becoming accessible and “likeable”, unlike the past where businesses were faceless and some “distant” entity that people couldn’t connect with. Even more important is the fact that people are connecting more with small businesses because they “like” them.
Twitter is an effective tool for building this kind of relationship. You can connect with, talk to and engage with your target audience on just about anything related to your small business without spending a fortune.

Can Target Specific Audiences

One of the major reasons why small business owners spend a lot more money on advertising than they should is because of poor or inadequate demography targeting. Sure, most may know who their target audience is, but when the advertising medium doesn’t provide this, they often have to make do with what is available, resulting in unnecessarily expensive ads and lower ROI’s.

With Twitter however, you never have to worry about this. You see, Twitter provides an array of tools that helps you target select demography by age, sex, hobbies, interests, goals, income bracket, desires and even mobile carriers as reported by Adage. The point is that with this laser targeted marketing, you can ramp up your profits and ROI whilst reducing your ad spend.
Summarily,

More Targeted Ads + Lower Ad Spend= Better ROI and Profits

Excellent for Establishing Authority in Your Industry

Quick question: who would you do business with: someone who knows what they’re talking about or someone you like but aren’t sure they know what they are talking about? Chances are you chose the first person. Why? Because you’d rather entrust your hard earned money into the hands of a very capable individual than someone you just like. Twitter can help you do just this. You see, every small business needs all the competitive edge and advantage they can get. And one such advantage lies in your customers’ perception of you.

With Twitter, you can create the impression of being very knowledgeable, resourceful, credible and most importantly, focused on your clients and customers. People are more interested in doing business with you when they know that you’re more knowledgeable and experienced than they are; and they’re willing to pay for it too.

Quick Lead Generation

Want to start generating leads for your business fast without spending a ton of money on ads? Add Twitter to your marketing arsenal.

With over 230 million daily active users from all over the world and almost 3 million active users (slightly more than 10% of the population) in Australia, Twitter represents an incredible way to generate leads for your business.

Take advantage of the potential that Twitter presents and cash in on this unique opportunity. Position your business on Twitter so that you can ride the emerging trend for maximum profits.

Tweets Will Start Showing up on Google

And the last reason why Twitter should be added to your marketing mix is the fact that Google has recently agreed to let tweets show up in its search engine results listings. Translation: this is huge.

While it hasn’t really taken off yet –we’re sure Google is trying to work out every kink and bugs so that when it takes off, there’ll be no slowing down- we will be seeing Google include tweets from established brands and businesses more in their search engine listings.

This will greatly benefit small Australian business owners who have worked hard to establish some sort of presence. Not to worry, even if you haven’t started, you can start right now. It doesn’t take that long to establish some presence on Twitter.

There’s also the added benefit of “link juice” to your website. So, it will be great for improving your rankings on the search engines and helping you get more search visibility.

Now that you know how Twitter can help you, take advantage of this marketing tool today. Include it in your marketing arsenal and enjoy the ensuing rewards and benefits.