If you’re a business owner, chances are that your business is on at least one major social media platform. Most likely Facebook, although I’ve begun to get bored of Mark Zuckerberg’s giant baby over the years.
Anyway, point is that every business owner has a reason for registering their business(s) on one social media. The other and more often than not, it’s mainly for the purpose of expanding one’s reach and gaining more clients.
If you’re a small business owner, chances are you’ve struggled with your social media marketing consistently, and right now you’re probably wondering what all the hype was about.
I wouldn’t say we’re in the same boat but hey, I can relate to how you feel.
The truth is that there’s a right way to do social and there’s a wrong way (and apparently, it seems you’ve been doing it the wrong way).
Nevertheless, I’m here to point out to you all the reasons why yours and many other businesses have been failing with regard to social media marketing.
Here we go:
Reasons Why Some Businesses Fail in Social Media Marketing.
1. They buy followers:
This one, this very one right here stands out like a bad apple in the midst of many.
A lot of businesses are guilty of buying followers. Perhaps, there’s a high chance 10 out of 100 people who read this post have one time or another purchased followers.
Especially for Instagram, you know yourselves. With the hopes that you were buying “real followers” that would engage with your content and possibly buy from you.
We’ll let me be the first to clear a misconception that has plagued people for so long and it’s this:
It’s a very, very, very bad idea.
You can’t really buy real followers anywhere. It’s that simple. If a website tells you that they sell such, do not believe them.
If you’ve had some experience with this dirty trick to boost your social media followers, chances are you realized only after paying upfront. You were sold thousands and thousands of bots that were programmed to unfollow you after a certain number of days.
Nothing worthwhile ever comes easy. The only way to acquire real social media followers that will engage with your content and buy from you is to consistently build your followers over a long period of time.
Could be using several legal strategies that I will post in a different article later. Any other “easy-looking, quick method” will just put you in hot water, so don’t do this.
2. Their posts come off too salesly
In this day and age, especially on a medium such as Social, you cannot afford to predominantly post overly salesy content. And expect not to totally bore your followers to run away from you.
Marketing nowadays has become more entertaining and relatable and anything other than that on Social media will bore your audience.
You need to spice up your social media content. Get a Content Calendar that touches diversified content Pillars that also creatively includes your sales message and you will see the change in your brand’s engagement and Affinity with your target audience.
3. They start with the wrong objective
The first thing to do once you start a social media Advertising campaign is to choose your campaign objective.
And let me just assure you of something. If you start with the wrong objective, what will happen is you’re going to be tracking the wrong metrics. Thus the results you will get at the end of the campaign will just not make sense.
It’s like if you have an ecommerce store selling jewelry and you pick an objective for Engagement instead of Conversions, you’ll be preoccupied with how many likes and comments your ads are getting instead of focusing on how many people are converting into sales.
You need to be thoroughly sure you understand the objective of your ad campaign or else you’re going to waste a lot of money.
4. They don’t understand their audience – not really.
Even before you start a social media marketing campaign, long before selecting a campaign objective. If you cannot get into the shoes (in fact, into the skin) of your target audience, your entire campaign will fall flat on its face.
Let me put it this way: It would be like selling meat to vegetarians.
Every business owner must know without a shred of doubt who their products and services are made for. You must know their location, their age range, their gender, their behaviors, their pain points, where they hang out online, and more.
No, you don’t have to be a cyberstalker to be able to unravel this. And you certainly can’t arrive at this conclusion simply by assumption. Your answers have to be backed up by strong research.
5. They underestimate the importance of outsourcing to an Agency.
When you tell a businessman or woman “Outsource your social media marketing to an Agency”, what you’ll mostly hear will range from something like, “My mother’s nephew’s brother’s son knows how to run social media sponsored posts” or “Social media management? Is it not just to post content?
No, no, no, and another big no.
Truth is with the number of things to do as a business owner, trust me you’re not going to have the focus, the expertise nor the time required to execute a thorough social media marketing campaign by yourself so you’re always better off handing your marketing activities in general to a specialized agency.
This is also a good idea because let’s face it, you’re not going to run campaigns all year round. There’re only a few companies that can run marketing campaigns all year round and your business is most likely not one of them.
About the author
Richard Juwah is the Co-founder and CEO of Richee Media, a full-service Social Media agency based in Nigeria. Richee Media is servicing clients locally and abroad with a wide range of social media services like social media marketing, social media management, influencer marketing, social media audits, social media content creation and social media training.
