Small businesses need to become widely visible to attract paying customers. However, it can be tough to compete against larger enterprises that have long established their brands and have gained loyal followings especially since SMBs often have meagre budgets set aside for marketing.
Often, SMBs take it upon themselves to create their marketing assets, whether it’s building their own websites, designing and writing content or managing social media campaigns.
Over a third of business owners in the UK say that attracting new customers is their biggest challenge. Content creation tool developer, Lightricks, also revealed a study that shows 72pc of business leaders believe they’re falling short of their marketing goals, even if they’re spending half of their time tending to their campaigns.
As such, SMBs must be able to find efficient ways on how to build their brands. Fortunately, they can take advantage of social media marketing in order to reach out to the right audiences quickly and cheaply.
Tools are now increasingly becoming available. Solutions like Lightricks’ BoostApps suite, for example, features easy-to-use content creation apps that help SMBs increase their engagement and sales.
The apps enable SMBs, one-man-show entrepreneurs and micro-influencers to generate visual content compelling to social media channels and today’s marketing best practices.
Social media marketing on a budget
Social media marketing focuses on connecting with the right audience and establishing a strong reputation.
Social media marketing can be relatively cheap. With the help of today’s social media’s various ad platforms, SMBs can reach thousands of targeted users without spending a hefty budget. This is unlike more traditional channels of marketing that require significant spending and patience to see any ROI, such as SEO.
Social media can be beneficial for companies with a specific niche market. Different channels like Facebook and Instagram can be used to target audiences according to various categories such as geographic area, age, gender and interests. The performance of these ad campaigns can easily be tracked by in-app analytics and simple engagement statistics such as likes, shares, and leads (depending on the campaign’s KPIs).
In addition, SMBs can leverage social media to position themselves as thought leaders or experts in their field. Sharing high quality content through appropriate channels can help businesses build their brands and their networks.
However, one key trend that SMBs have to consider when marketing on social media is the growing popularity of visual and video content. Today, it’s become standard for companies to come out with creatives in the form of short videos that get straight to the point, infographics that describe and explain their products and services, and visual content that manages to stop the user from scrolling further on the feed.
Social media platforms are also moving towards supporting such content as seen in the introduction of stories on Instagram and Facebook. With hundreds of millions of users, Instagram stories are now being used even by organisations like NASA and big brands like Nike to increase engagement.
Using BoostApps to create trendy social media content
This demand for visual and video content in social media marketing has pushed app developers to provide affordable creative mobile solutions. Lightricks recently released BoostApps – a suite of creative tools specifically made for SMBs, micro-influencers and entrepreneurs to create engaging visual and video content.
The suite includes three apps: PosterBoost, StoryBoost and VideoBoost. All of these apps allow users, regardless of design expertise, to easily create content for social media marketing campaigns.
Typically, high quality visual content requires assets such as photographs, raw footage, animation and audio which are all put together by artists and editors using sophisticated and expensive software. BoostApps simplifies this process by allowing users to create and customise visual content from their mobile phone.
StoryBoost helps users create Instagram stories using unique animations, stickers and animated texts. The app provides trendy Story templates, customisation options and animated stickers to enable users to create their own unique and eye-catching stories. Users can also apply animated transitions between pages to keep their stories looking fresh.
The Story maker app has received the Editor’s Choice award on the US App Store along with hundreds of reviews that come up to an average of 4.4 stars (4.6 on the UK App Store), and won #3 Product of the Day on Product Hunt.
The app is free to download from the App Store. Unlimited access for premium features is also available for either $7.99 (~£6.10) per month, $44.99 (~£34.50) per year or $99.99 (~£76.80) as a lifetime purchase.
VideoBoost enables users to easily make compelling videos optimised for engagement. The app distills the essential capabilities of video production software into a mobile app. It has a template library that users can simply customise. It allows for multiple clips to be joined and edited together to create more dynamic sequences. It even features a music library to help users find the perfect score to enhance the appeal of their videos.
The video maker app has received thousands of reviews that come up to an average of 4.7 stars on the US App Store (4.5 on the UK app store), along with many positive reviews on Product Hunt.
The app is free to download from the App Store. Unlimited access for premium features is also available for either $9.99 (~£7.80) per month, $59.99 (~£46.80) per year, or $119.99 (~£93.50) as a lifetime purchase.
PosterBoost helps users create engaging animated posters and flyers. Instead of posting static and simple images, users can instead use more dynamic 2D visuals. Users can select from a variety of templates, customize their chosen template, add animated stickers, and use camera motion to make their posters even more interesting.
The poster maker app has received hundreds of reviews that come up to an average of 4.8 stars on the US App Store and the UK App Store.
The app is free to download from the App Store. Unlimited access for premium features is also available for either $7.99 (~£6.20) per month, $44.99 (~£35) per year, or $99.99 (~£78) as a lifetime purchase.
BoostApps also provides access to a wide selection of stock images and videos from Getty which users can tap to supplement their own images and video footage. All the apps have a built-in social media integration feature that enables users to readily share their content through various social media channels like Instagram and Facebook.
The apps are available through various subscription tiers so users can choose the usage level that’s fit for their budgets or campaigns. The apps can be availed individually or as a bundle.
Unfortunately, BoostApps is only available for iOS 11 and higher which means it requires newer iOS devices to run and it isn’t available on Android yet. Lightricks have commented that an Android version of the BoostApps suite is to be expected in the future.
Jump-starting growth
There’s no doubt that social media marketing and visual content should be part of every SMB marketer’s toolbox. Solutions like BoostApps by Lightricks offer an affordable and convenient way for SMBs to jumpstart their social media marketing campaigns. Through these apps, they can create highly engaging and shareable content that can boost their brand’s reach and stimulate growth.
