Sometimes Social Media marketing is the LEAST EFFECTIVE way to reach your customers and build new clients.
Some time ago my husban's mother asked me why I was not using Instagram and other social media marketing a lot more to advertise our hospitality business.
She really wanted to know why I would be willing to miss out on potential customers through Instagram and Facebook marketing. She is a very smart businesswoman, to be fair, she did have a point.
Are all these people following your social media account paying clients or do they just like watching your reels?
I tried to explain that our customers were not necessarily on Social Media and given the time I had allocated to market the business I had to concentrate on the most effective marketing tool that would bring us paid customers in our business.
There is certainly a lot of benefit to building a bigger tribe on social media. But my question is are all these people following your social media account paying clients or do they just like watching your reels?
Probably somewhere in between…
Before the Internet, if you wanted to market your business, you’d use pretty much everything at your disposal… from newspaper magazines ads to basic flyer advertising, business directories and if you were more adventurous billboard and trade show advertising and more to promote your yoga business.
But these days you use Social Media marketing right? (Even though you have a website and an app!)
Well, somebody like me whose been marketing online since 2008 is in a good position to say that sometimes Social Media posts are NOT the best way to reach your customers and build your business tribe. Let me give you some examples.
What are the 5 reasons Social Media Marketing may not work for your business?
Let’s say you have a yoga studio and you are mainly using social media to promote your service. Now depending on the demographics many of your customers are not necessarily on social media, or they do not follow you. That means potentially, you have isolated a very big portion of the paying clients because your social media simply has not reached them!
Or say, you have 5000 Facebook followers. Well, the majority of the time you’d be doing really well if you are reaching around 100 people per post or story. What that means in actuality is that you do not reach 4900 out of 5000 people you think are your fans!
In this case, a handwritten direct mail letter posted directly to the potential customer's homes would be the right kind of marketing tool to use.
Reels no question get a higher number of people viewing, but these people often are anywhere on the planet, certainly not everyone is watching them within a mile of your brick and mortar business. You would instead get a better shot at getting paying clients if you handed out 100 flyers with strong offers to attract new clients.
Sometimes people viewing your social media posts, however high, gets you the lowest quality, least-interested in spending money in your business, shop, studio. You’d be better off using your own marketing tool that YOU control, such as using your own database of clients and using database marketing to communicate to your prospects and clients directly.
People who hang out on social media are not really in the buying mood. They are there to basically hang out. You trying to push the message in front of them has a benefit, but in this case, you’d do much better if you targeted through online ads like Google Ads to people who search for “xyz business near me”. That way, you know they are looking for the service you can provide.
So, sometimes Social Media is certainly the easiest way to get on, promote your business and new service, and hopefully reach paying customers, especially when it’s done right. But other times you have a far better chance of getting paying clients in using anything else other than social media marketing.
Are you ready to take your business to the next level? Do you need directions that will help you navigate your business growth in the next 1,2, 5 or more years? My online marketing consulting service is designed to help achieve your next business goals.
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I look forward to hearing from you
To growth
Tamara Forrest-Smith
Socrates Bike - The Thinking Marketer
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