The Ministry of SMEs and Startups and the Korea SMEs and Startups Distribution Center are stepping up support for social media marketing by small business owners. The program is being expanded beyond one-off advertising subsidies toward helping merchants build marketing capabilities on their own.
The distribution center said on the 3rd that it will run the social media marketing support program for 1,200 small businesses through the end of the year, a 60% increase from 750 firms last year. Under the program, experts in each field design and run targeted social media advertising tailored to each merchant’s products to raise brand awareness. Advertising is concentrated on Meta’s Instagram and Facebook, reflecting survey findings that more than 90% of participating merchants last year preferred Meta platforms.
The program proceeds in three stages: diagnosis and consulting, targeted ad placement, and performance analysis with follow-up management. Before ads run, merchants go through one-on-one consulting with an expert to analyze the strengths of their industry and products and to set an advertising strategy. Preliminary testing then identifies the version that draws the strongest consumer response, and ads are placed according to the characteristics of each platform. Once the campaign ends, participants receive a performance analysis report. Starting this year, the center is also providing training on using artificial intelligence so merchants can continue marketing on their own after the program ends.
In one case, coffee bean brand Beompyo Coffee Bean Factory drew 2,659 customers to its NAVER Smart Store while running Meta ads through the program. Those customers spent a combined 25.94 million won. “Working with a marketing expert, we analyzed Smart Store customer data and were able to set targeting and an advertising strategy suited to the characteristics of new and repeat customers,” said Yoon Ki-sun, head of Beompyo Coffee Bean Factory.
The distribution center sees the program as a way to narrow the information gap that small business owners face in the shift to digital. “The social media marketing support program goes beyond simply injecting funds and provides a practical foundation for self-reliance, including detailed consulting,” an official at the center said. “We will establish it as a leading model for building the competitiveness of small business owners in a sustainable way.”
#SmallBusiness#SNSMarketing#KoreaSMEs#DigitalMarketing#MetaAds#SmartStore
Original reporting by Kim Tae-young for Seoul Economic Daily.
AI-translated from Korean. Quotes from foreign sources are based on Korean-language reports and may not reflect exact original wording.
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