Reaching small-business owners, managers and decision-makers is notoriously hard to do. You know that, right?

There are lots of reasons for this — here are just a few:

• The small business market is fragmented. For example, a time honored approach to reach SMBs is through industry organizations, chambers of commerce and similar affiliations they belong to. However, this can be a laborious, time consuming and expensive approach. It may involve attending many events and participating in many different groups and associations, just to reach a handful of people at each.
• Often the price points of products or services aimed at small businesses do not justify individual sales calls — the economics lend themselves to more of a mass market approach. Frequently there’s not enough margin in a sale to justify an “enterprise” approach to selling products, with individualized sales made one-on-one.
• Many of the REALLY small businesses (microbusinesses) are organized virtually these days, without a headquarters place of business, or are operated from a home office, so it can be hard to physically even locate the business address.

And the list goes on.

So with all the scratching around just trying to find prospects, it can be tempting to pin your hopes on social media sites just because you can reach large numbers of people at once.

That would be a major mistake.

Don’t get me wrong: social media sites do have their value. You can reach large numbers of entrepreneurs and business decision makers. I personally have expanded my network through social media. In fact, there are ways to use social media in your marketing to the small business market. Just don’t pin your hopes too much on social media.

Social media should be one component, but not the sole thrust of your marketing.

With social media you’re going to reach the very earliest adopters, the bleeding edge types, those who spend inordinate amounts of time online. The ranks of people on social media sites tend to be filled with marketing, PR and SEO professionals.

The size profile of those you reach will be skewed … dominated by freelancers and the self-employed and those without employees in their businesses. Reaching out to mainstream small businesses and businesses with more than 5 or 10 employees through social media sites is much more difficult.

Why? Mainstream small businesspeople simply are not into such sites yet. Even the ones who spend time online and have a blog, probably won’t spend a lot of time on places like Facebook or Twitter. Even the ones who may have tried LinkedIn, which tends to have a higher percentage of mainstream business types, quickly tire of getting invites to the latest greatest social media sites. And they only have so much time to spend online.

For a glimpse into how the majority think about social media sites, read: Ten Reasons I Won’t Use Social Media Sites.

And if you want ideas about how to fit social media into your marketing mix, read:
Why Social Media Should Be a Key Ingredient in Your Marketing Mix