Could Social Media Increase The Value Of Your Business?

The value of your business is directly related to your businesses profitability and turnover, and for businesses with premises this has in the past been directly related to the businesses location.

Location, Location, Location was the mantra expressed. The greater the number of people walking past your premises, (the footfall), the greater probability that someone will see your premises and display and be inspired to browse.

Location however comes with a huge price and it is called Rent & Rates you can expect to pay a much larger amount in Rent & Rates for premises in a primary position compared to a secondary position.

This increases your breakeven point, risk, and cash flow requirements for your business, and leaves you vulnerable in a downturn. During the recession numerous High Street businesses went bust, because they could no longer cover the costs of their business.

The use of Social Media is one way of increasing your footfall without having that prime high street position, and I am surprised that more businesses are not using it.

For those who don’t know, I am talking about using of Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare etc to promote your business, the costs are low, the risks are low and your customers are already there! By engaging with your customers and potential customer you can increase your footfall and customer loyalty.

Lets take an example of a Hairdressing business.

During a Saturday you will have no problem with appointments, perhaps even you might have to turn business away, but there will be times during the week when your appointment book is empty. You could tweet special offers “First person to book an appointment for this afternoon gets £10 off our prices”

Or offer free haircuts to the major on Foursquare (you need to investigate!)

Or simply ask people to like your business on Facebook and become a Fan and create Facebook only discounts.

So perhaps you don’t need that High Street position anymore, and you can create a business model of buying cheap businesses and build up their profitability and value using Social Media.

This entry was posted on 25/09/2010 at 10:27 am and is filed under Buyers, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.