Social media marketing and other digital marketing services became in-demand since the pandemic started in 2020. With communications and transactions mostly done online, it has also become a norm to see brands kick off their marketing campaigns online in hopes to keep up with other competitors and grow their business further. Many businesses of varying sizes from various industries continue to turn to online channels to perform their marketing campaigns to reach the right audience and increase their sales.
The online world is a vast territory that offers different ways to boost online presence and brand awareness, but social media per se, stands out because of its accessibility and user-friendliness, hence, the reason why businesses continue to turn to social media marketing to promote their products and services and establish a strong customer base online.
Despite the evident rise in the use of social media marketing, there are still misconceptions that continue to hamper some businesses in including it into their marketing mix. So to break wrong mindsets and pick up better ideas that will grow your business, we’ll be debunking the common misconceptions about social media marketing.
1. You Need to Be Present on Every Social Media Platform to Get Your Social Media Marketing Right
It’s ideal for every business to at least find their niche in mainstream social media platforms and create a social media account on those platforms. However, it’s a misconception that you need to be present on every single social media platform out there. Keep in mind that your social media marketing doesn’t rely on just the number of platforms that your business is in. It does help, but if your target market isn’t on those platforms, then you may just be wasting your time. You need to determine your target audience and the platform they may likely be on, so you can engage the right people to your brand and avoid unnecessary pulls of effort on the wrong people in the wrong platform.
You can also read: 8 Social Media Marketing Tips To Help Grow Your Business
2. A Large Following Equates to the Success of Your Social Media Marketing
Another misconception that some businesses tend to look at when starting with their social media marketing. To emphasize, the success of your social media marketing doesn’t revolve around the number of followers your business has. Ultimately, the number of people interested in your brand and what it offers is more important than a large number of followers on social media. You can have 1,000+ followers but many of them just follow your account without making a purchase from your business or don’t interact much with your posts. Instead, your goal should be to get your followers to take action and click on links to learn more about your products and services.
3. Social Media Marketing is Free
Posting on social media is free, but social media marketing is not free. Those are two different things. Initially, making a social media account for your business is free and there’s a bunch of creative features readily available on social media platforms such as Instagram that enable you to produce eye-catching posts, but when you get to the more complex parts of growing your business, you can’t expect everything to be free.
It’s vital to understand that proper social media marketing comes with planning and creating strategies that will benefit your business, not to mention, the amount of time and effort it takes to develop content and designs that will best represent your brand to your target audience. This means that it’s no easy feat and it takes people who are knowledgeable and experienced in the field to properly manage and utilize resources to pull off an effective social media marketing strategy that will bring growth to your business.
4. Social Media Marketing is Just a Trend
In this digital age, it’s difficult for businesses with no online presence at all to thrive and establish a strong niche, especially when they’re just starting. Even bigger and more established brands have realized the importance of being present online, and one of the ways to do that is to have your business presence on social media. With technology advancements and different social media platforms keeping up with changes, it’s sure that social media marketing is not just a trend — it’s definitely here to stay.
5. There are Not Enough Customers on Social Media
To say that social media is only for teenagers and a certain group of people is a misconception in itself. This notion limits the potential customer reach that businesses can have on social media, insinuating that there are not enough customers on social media. Although this doesn’t also say that all of your target customers are on one social media platform. Of course, every social media platform is different from one another and is filled with varying demographics. So as you look for customers to reach on social media, you should look into the social media demographics because this will help you know more about how many of them you can reach and engage on those platforms.
6. Social Media Marketing is Limited Only to Some Industries
There’s always something to promote about a business, regardless of what industry it belongs to. Social media is not limited or not bound to selected industries. It doesn’t mean that because you mostly see food, entertainment, news media, and the music industry on social media platforms, they’re the only ones who can market to their target audience on social media. We can tell you this: no matter what the industry is, there will always be people who’ll be interested in what you’re offering.
7. Social Media Marketing is Not Measurable
Not being able to measure your ROI is not a problem with social media marketing. In fact, social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram offer ways to measure the insights of your business page’s account. So you’ll be able to monitor your social media metrics such as engagement, impressions and reach, the share of voice, referrals and conversions, and response rate and time. You can also make use of analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Sprout Social, BuzzSumo, HubSpot, and more to measure your social media insights. These tools help you learn more about your lead generation and how you can calculate acquisition costs on the platform.
8. The Number of Posts Matter More Than The Quality of Posts
This is absolutely false. As Bill Gates would put it: “content is king,” so the quality of posts is still more important than the number of posts. Remember that it should be quality over quantity even on your social media marketing. Your target audience doesn’t really count the number of posts you have in a day. What matters is how you’ll be able to relate with your audience and speak of your brand in a way that will stick with them. Take note that in every social media platform, there’s an ideal number of posts per day, and knowing how often you should post on social media will help with that.
9. Anyone Can Do the Social Media Marketing of Your Business
Social media marketing doesn’t revolve around posting and getting likes and reactions from both current and potential customers. It’s more than that. And as you go about it, it gets more complex by the day. You can’t expect to apply the same strategy you did the last time just because it worked. With the online world and social media changing quickly, what worked today might not be as effective in the next campaigns.
That’s why it’s important to avoid giving the social media marketing task to someone who doesn’t have much experience or doesn’t take time to learn their way through proper social media marketing. Make sure to choose the right marketing team that will look after your business and attends to its best interest. If you’re personally managing your social media marketing or another person/marketing team is doing it, see to it that every content is backed by proper planning and strategizing together with good design and quality execution. Outsourcing social media marketing from reputable digital marketing agencies will be very helpful as they are well-versed and experienced on the matter.
10. Social Media Marketing is Too Time-Consuming
Social media marketing doesn’t have to be time-consuming as long as you’re using the right tools such as managing apps that will help ease the work that needs to be done. These social media marketing tools enable you to make the best use of your time and effort by allowing you to plan and schedule content ahead of its posting date. Of course, it’s also worth noting that a well-thought-out strategy is necessary for the success of your social media marketing.
When you strategize your content, you don’t need to cram your way into creating a post for your product or service, plus you’ll have more time for other important business matters, wasting no time in the process. The results you want to see for your business aren’t seen at an instant, and if you don’t utilize the right tools, you’ll have a hard time working your way through all the planning, creating, and marketing.
If you’re looking for someone to help you with the social media marketing of your business, contact us today, and we’ll be glad to help you!
