As is the case for many business decisions, the potential advantages of social media marketing are dependent on the local business’s goals. That being said, some advantages may include: 1. The opportunity to receive relevant customer reviews - Customer reviews are an important and growing influence on many digital marketing touch points. Digital marketing provides the opportunity to communicate with a local audience and receive reviews and feedback. 2. As has been wisely pointed out in the other answers, social media marketing is often less expensive than is traditional marketing . The ability to control the demographic and geographical reach of paid social media advertising results in not spending the budget on non-relevant audiences. 3. Social Media presences is a necessary element of most local business’s success - more often than ever local business prospects check for a social media presence prior to shopping with a local business. A local business’s credibility may be on the line if they fail to build out their social media profile. 4. Social Media channels can offer an easy to access communication pipe between a business and their customers - thinking beyond “marketing” and toward customer service, social media provides an opportunity assist customers through messaging platforms. Social Media marketing can offer several advantages to local business and because of the ability to focus and limit spends, it does so with very little risk. Again, a solid, well considered and formal marketing plan will produce the data that is necessary to make formal decisions about the use of social media and how to optimize its use .