This is a personal message. From me to you; the entrepreneur, the local business owner, and even the man or woman in charge of driving lead generation. It is past time you know why social media strategy is important.
It is important for entrepreneurs to understand social media strategy today because it can help grow the leads, improve relationships with current customers, and be used as a primary method for educating people about products and services. Most entrepreneurs today have some experience using social media. Unfortunately, their experience is usually limited to personal use. Even in cases where entrepreneurs have used social media to help grow their businesses in the past, their experience is usually limited to a handful of examples. This means that most entrepreneurs have a very limited of all the social media tools and strategies that are available to help them grow a new business.
Your business and your dreams depend on this in today’s world. You can choose to ignore this statement. Some of you might even be laughing right now. And trust, me I would rather see you laugh than see you cry. However, crying is exactly where I have seen many entrepreneurs recently. These are entrepreneurs with great ideas, incredible products, and concepts that could really help people if only they had…
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- … a bigger budget,
- … more qualified customers,
- … a larger pool of customers,
- … a way to share their gift with more people,
- or maybe just the means to get in front of the one true decision-maker.
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Sound familiar? If so, you might have also recently contemplated if social media can help with any of these issues. Hopefully, you are still at the point of being able to make small changes, slowly in order to create positive change in your business. But my fear is more and more business owners are becoming desperate to stay afloat. Increased competition from others who have already figured out social media is on the horizon in almost every industry. During the last 3 years especially I have worked with clients who have superior products and services but fail to see the marketing machines their competitors are creating before its too late.
As we near the start of the first full decade in history where digital marketing is a priority for both businesses and consumers, it’s time to understand that those who do not embrace social media will be unable to compete.
Why should entrepreneurs understand social media strategy? The following 3 examples help illustrate what you might already know or be worried about in the back of your mind.
Reason 1: Entrepreneurs are being tricked into thinking social media ads alone are effective.
When I met with a client and former colleague this week, he was obviously angry about paying for ads on social media that didn’t work. He spent more than $2,000 of his own personal money on ads that never produced a single customer. And of course, the other agency he worked with has no reason, and probably no ability, to refund any portion of the loss.
This is a common story that entrepreneurs and local business owners tell me about all the time during our free consultation sessions, but it really hit me when a personal friend who is already tight on cash mentioned being misled into creating ads that never had a chance of succeeding. Has this ever happened to you or your business?Reason 2: Entrepreneurs are trusting people who do not listen to their needs.
The secret to managing social media strategy does not involve high-priced agencies. I have worked with and for several of these and heard horror stories from clients who trusted the wrong people. Not all agencies are bad. In fact there are many good ones with talented people and teams managing incredibly successful campaigns. But some will over such promises only to pass work off to cheap entry level staff or freelance teams with little knowledge of the client. Here’s how I used the right tool for the job to earn a client who was facing bankruptcy after dealing with an agency that mismanaged his $2 million marketing budget through similar tactics.
This company spends over half a million dollars a year on Facebook ads specifically. By the time I met with the owner, he believed it was almost too late. His sales season required a very specific start and stop date and progress was already behind for this year. He was already preparing to fire the agency and go back to doing everything on his own, but he was worried for a couple of reasons. First, he didn’t have the time to run his business and manage all the advertising that seemed to require constant attention. Secondly, the social media algorithm was different than it used to be and he knew his system needed help. After speaking with him it was obvious what needed to happen was not necessarily in my best interest. At least not right away.
My solution was to help him first and foremost. My agency is small but effective and this helps businesses because we can produce amazing results for far less cost. In this case, I didn’t need a commission or setup fee. For about 25 times less than what he was paying the other agency, I was able to make the changes in time that proved to save his company. We fixed his system, updated the process, and repositioned his ads to decrease the cost of conversion from $70 down to $10 in less than 2 weeks. We also added over 100,000 followers to his Facebook page and fixed his Google ads. And most importantly, I did all this by putting the client’s needs first.
In this example, I was able to save the year for this business and help someone else who considering shutting down what should be a very profitable business. The secret to this success according to the client himself, was that I listened to him. I did not try to steer him toward the answer that was best for my agency and bottom-line. I listened to the problems he was facing and provided the strategic solutions that created change within a few days.
Reason 3: Entrepreneurs do not understand that social media solutions have a shelf-life.
But then the almighty algorithms changed and a small catastrophe occurred. So, the company hired me to make updates. The same pattern occurred. And then again. And now currently we are going through another revamp.
The important thing is that every time the system changes and their social media strategy seems to fail, we make a change and revenue increases again.
Nick is the owner of Shark Jockey Digital and 20 year veteran in the marketing industry. He currently helps clients with development projects, lead generation, website creation, SEO, SEM, PPC, social media marketing, Google reviews, online listing, and campaign management.
