I hired someone to do the social media for my business. It was more expensive than the business could afford but I was thinking of it as an investment. We’re in month 2 and I’m not seeing any increase in sales. In your experience how effective is social media marketing? And how long does it take to see results if using organic methods (no ads)?
Really effective if done well.
Social Media is not great for ROI.
Google or SEO is.
Many say 2 months is too short but the campaigns that have worked for me work from week 1 or 2. I have never been a believer that ad experts can tweek a non working campaign sometime during month 3-4 to make it magically work.
So I should focus on google ads?
2 months is hardly enough time to see a turn around on ad expense. That said it sounds like maybe you’re overpaying. I would seek out a ramp up type of marketing. Start small that grows as you grow.
I disagree with this. I have run many campaigns in my short life and they either work or don’t. I have never seen anyone turn it around.
It either worked right off the bat or didn’t work 4 months later after tweaking it.
Organic social strategies have historically terrible ROI. They’re best used for social proof to reduce ad costs, not to drive sales.
Two months in should have shown some kind of movement in a secondary metric, like unique site visitors or web traffic. Ideally you can trace the traffic performance all the way to a success criterion on your website like a booking page or a purchase. What do your metrics show?
It shows that there has been a slight increase in traffic from social media to the website
You need to build a following of people who buy your service or products. Just having social media doesn’t mean those people see your posts. You need to continue to be engaged to build your customer base. Comment on other posts, get your social media account noticed by people who will buy your product/service. You need potential customers to see the social media so that they can like it, follow it, and share it.
In 2 months I would think you should get at least one inbound but that assumes people see your social media, not just that you have social media.
Edit: I saw results in 2 weeks when I launched. But I posted my new product on Reddit and FB pages specifically on my niche. So those people saw my post and came to me to try/buy my product.
So it’s better to post in FB groups and on Reddit rather than IG or TikTok
It really depends on where your users are. I believe this is trial and error to see what works for you. I thought I would get more IG followers than I did up front. Most of my IG followers are influencers in the same field. I do have a few actual potential end users in the mix but not many. I am also not really producing enough compelling content at the moment.
When I launched I went to the reddit sub that was dedicated to my niche and announced what I was doing and how my product helps the community. In doing that I had a lot of interested people go to the website and order my product. A few even turned into paying customers. But I spoke to those people in that post. It was more personal.
For FB, I will occasionally comment on a post mentioning how my product could help them. I see a direct correlation with orders for every post that I do that on. It’s a quick uptick and then tail off.
A few people will sign up for my social media accounts when I do the FB posts but it’s not as many as I would have thought. If I had more compelling content I think I could get more. I sell a sort of lifestyle product and I think that needs to tell a story. I just have not been able to do a great job with that yet.
Let’s say you are a local restaurant, I would go to your towns Facebook page and post a 10% coupon or something. Let people know you are there. Call the coupon FBNOV23 so you know where your users are coming from.
If you are a machine shop…make sure you are listed in Google maps for your area, show some videos of your shop, making parts, etc. let people know your business is open and producing great products.
You’ll need to understand where you get customers and where you want to get customers from.
What kind of business do you run?
I see alot of business fail on social media by treating organic content like ads. Constantly posting promotions, events, flyers, and whatever product/service they’re selling. It gets little to no engagement because they’re just spamming and not providing any value to an audience. No entertainment, useful information/education, or just content in general to compete with the memes/hot babes/gurus all over social media.
I do my own and it’s working fine for me. Just pay for ads to run for a certain time frame. It’s a fair price
When is the last time you bought something from social media?
Asking the real questions.
Is the social media marketer leveraging business listings? I don’t know your industry but B2C local companies benefit greatly from listing management and promotion. B2B is a different type of beast that requires the social media manager to make connections with prospective businesses that might become leads.
Cut it off now OP.
That industry is choc full of snake oil types. Outsource some other jobs and do it yourself.
Source : got burnt 4 times as a startup. Spent weeks figuring it out myself, got. My business to 10k/month and then outsourced with an actual budget and the ability to challenge
I hate using social media which is why I outsourced this and do everything else myself. But how did you figure it out?
I have been in business for many years, Return on Investment is what I consider a valuable metric. MY ROI from social media has led me to deleting most of my social presence, The effort involved does not get the same results as I do elsewhere.
I do kitchens, BICs and custom furniture to the consumer market. Likes and Exposure don’t pay the rent, leads and sales do. Likes on facebook and Pinterest are great, they make you feel validated but they don’t put grub on the stove.
Advertising companies are cnuts, they will tell you that advertising in our magazine is good, but for them not you. If you advertise and get no results, try something else, My rule is that if an advert does not make a profit, I try something else. I am not throwing money out and getting nothing back, that’s just stupid.
What works for me, you may ask?
SEO is my main source of business. My website is continuously being tweaked and changed, I am in the middle of a complete redesign right now, Web designers will proclaim that it’s not good enough, I have had a dozen offer to design me a site in exchange for shares, for a small fee etc, but I am happy with the basics, they get results.
In times of slowdowns, flyers work like a dream. I have a theory that there are three types of people that hand out flyers, Those that pick the main routes and hand out a gazillion because traffic, but like the web traffic that is just passing through has no value. They always say flyers don’t work.
Then theirs the ones that go from door to door handing them out, better than the scattergun approach above, but time consuming, Also pick the wrong fellas to hand out flyers and you can have 5000 in a 1000 post boxes toot suite. Results can be good, but you are limited in the quantity you can distribute in a few hours.
Here is the secret to my success with flyers, pick a local school, pick an intersection leaving said school, hand out the flyers in the hour before school. The fact is that school drop offs are done by people that live in the area. I have better results at high schools in the more affluent areas, my target market seems to send their kids to these schools,
I am in two minds about Google Ads, They used to be cheap, they used to work but my results are very iffy these days.
Facebook ads don’t work, the targeting is very iffy in my part of the world. I get visits from people 500 miles away, I get many visits from students even if I exclude them and I get more requests for a job than anything else./ I don’t know where you are it may be different there.
The question you need to ask yourself is, Is my target market hanging out on Twitter / Facebook / Pinterest / TikTok all day? If so how the hell are they making money to afford my service?
Radio station advertising is pretty much the best if most of your business lives near the business. Anything to do with the internet is a waste in my opinion. Too broad of a net, never grabs local fish.
Phenomenally effective when your storytelling campaign is in alignment with your targeted demographic.
Organic on social takes most businesses 6-9 months to build the audience levels and engagement needed. It’s a long, hard slog, and then all of a sudden it’ll pop off.
There’s a lot of nuance to organic social though. How much content are you guys filming?
I have been working digital marketing for companies in Colombia, the United States and Europe for 10 years, so:
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What is the target of your company, not all companies need networks.
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If you don’t have a good marketing plan it is of no use, I have seen companies spend 20 thousand dollars and have no results.
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3 months is very little, it depends on the situation you start, it is not the same as having a positioned brand as starting from 0.
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You have to define some kpis that help you see the results. For any other advice you can ask me.
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