>> This article is part of my resources to help small businesses market themselves better. Check out part 1 about Facebook Ads here.
What’s the second thing you do right after you have a new business idea and just before you spend hours cracking your head wondering which website platform is right for you?
Yep, you grab your social media handles!
Afterall, I can’t be the only one who owns 17 Facebook pages, out of which 3 are businesses who made it past the 1 year mark.
Let me try and set the scene, and tell me if this resonates. On Tuesday, you have reserved your social media handles on IG and FB and maybe even on the PIN. On Wednesday, your logo is ready after a few hours of figuring out Canva. Thursday is then time to get some gray hair while trying to figure out why is it that all these platforms want cover images and logos and icons in 17 different formats. Friday your Canva-designed business cards arrive fresh from the printers, and you’re starting to feel like a real baller. You then proceed to whip a Shopify (or Squarespace, ‘cos that’s what the cool kids use these days!) website over the weekend. It’s not perfect, but it looks nice enough and it has your new logo on it, so it will do.
Come Monday, panic sets in.
Why is no one buying?
Where is everyone?
Helloooooooooooooo?
Oh my God, I just wasted all this time and Canva templates and what am I going to do now?!
Ah, I know what I’m going to do now: I’m going to hire someone who’s going to make me go viral and join Marie’s B-School so I can make 6-figures passively while sipping G&Ts on my balcony! Yay!
Let me say this clearly: going viral is NOT a marketing strategy any marketer worth his pickling salt would propose. Or agree to.
And even when more reasonable strategies are concerned, here’s why as a new small business owner, you really shouldn’t spend thousands on social media!
Social media is more about niche content than fancy features
Social media is a amazing way to connect with your ideal audience for free. Say you are a gourmet pickles company. Your audience is pickles connoisseurs. Right? You spent the last 17 years perfecting your great-grandma’s recipes to delight your customers’ palates like nothing before.
You’re sure you want to hire an Agency whose last client was “Johnny’s Car Was & Oil Change” to connect with your audience?
Please don’t let my dry humour take away from the main point. Which is: your audience is on social media because they want to connect with YOU as a person. Not with the pixel perfect posts created by a fancey agencey who’s offloading that to the last intern who’s never had pickles other than the ones in McDonald’s Cheeseburgers.
Those 17 years of experience is what your audience wants to see and will resonate with. Not being hyper-proficient at Reels.
Social media for a new business is all give-give-give
On day 1 of your website being live, there’s no amount of posts and no level of complexity that will make you MORE money than you just spent on that retainer.
As a new business, social media is a *brand marketing* activity which will yield results in medium to long term. You can’t expect to make $1000 on your second Facebook post. When you start, it’s all about giving value, showing your expertise, connecting with your audience.
And while this is a super valuable step (which many ignore!) – you’re better at it than any agency because you know your product so well. See point #1.
It’s plain dangerous to outsource social media with no data
Even the best of the social media marketers who have years of experience in gourmet products won’t be able to exactly plan the right combination of everything from day 1.
Social media, just like everything else in digital marketing, is about trying, testing, optimising and testing again.
So, if you spend thousands on social media with the brief “post things about pickles” – even the best agency will struggle to *get it right*.
Most social media service providers are content curators rather than strategists
This is my pet peeve. Social media creators who call themselves “digital marketing experts”. Oh, puh-leeeease! I don’t call myself a dentist because I floss!
I’ll bring you up to speed on the industry.
Social media creators: usually paid to do photoshoots and create gifs, videos and graphis. Your feed look aesthetically pleasant. Captions will be lame. Expect very low engagement.
Social media curators: usually paid to post X times per week, will make your feed look aesthetically pleasant and occasionally write nice captions. Your feed will look cute, but very few people will buy from you.
Social media strategists: paid to grow accounts and engagements. Feed may not look as perfect, but you’ll notice the people who follow you are “right” and buy from you.
Digital marketers: paid to make you more money online, using a variety of organic and paid strategies, which may include social media, too, as part of a larger strategy.
Be careful who you hire and what you are paying for. Good social media strategists are not easy to find and worth they weight in gold, which means they charge accordingly! Which also means that as a new business, you’re better off hiring them for a one-off strategy consultation rather than a 6-months retainer – because the implementation of a strategy is actually pretty simple.
A fun section on pricing of these services in Singapore, to give you an idea.
Social media creators: (also known as “communication agencies”) between $500/month for a spring chicken up to $4000/mo (that’s what a large retailer with 40 stores pays theirs). The latter, after years of using said agency, has about 8000 followers and 0 interaction unless the post is boosted for hundreds of $$$. So, proceed with caution.
Social media curators: anywhere from $200/month to $2000/month. Materials can be curated, created or a mix. Usually, you’ll get a report that tells you how many impressions you got at the end of the month. Good luck paying rent with impressions!
Social media strategists: $800 – $5000/month. In the realm of small businesses, I have yet to see or hear of someone who people are in love with. I saw a report done by a *competitor* for a business who hired me – I was appalled to find out that out of 12 pages sales generated was mentioned a grand total of 0 times. Ouch.
And yet, when I tell people I offer my personal help, support and professional advice in a small group for $64/month this is their reaction:
So hey, if your reaction is different – do check out what The Pickling Club is all about.
You can make more money by shoving those thousands elsewhere
And sure, this depends on whether you sell gourmet pickles or counselling sessions or silver photo frames.
BUT IN GENERAL, as a small business you want to start investing your money where it matters most, right?
If your goal is to get that cute Shopify site off the ground and you have $2000 to spend, here’s how I would allocate it:
- $120/month on Google Ads, which allows you to be found by people who already want to buy what you have, but don’t know you.
- $200 on a course to learn the basic ropes of digital marketing yourself, so you don’t get taken advantage of by anyone.
- $100 on social media templates such as these ones by Katya so it’s easier to design posts yourself.
- $200 on a paid mention in a Facebook Group where your ideal audience hangs out – make them an offer they can’t refuse!
- $200 on giving discounts to your early customers 🙂
- $20/month on a proper email marketing system which allows you to upsell, retain and automate customer interaction such as ActiveCampaign.
Ok, now we’ve spent $840 and in the first 2 weeks, you should already see the effects of these things! Now, use what you learned to decide how to spend the remaining $1160 in a way that makes sense and brings the biggest returns to you. Voilà.
You’re free to spend $100 to boost posts on Facebook (even though I wouldn’t recommend it), $150 on Pinterest ads and $90 on a nice lunch with a friend to relax from all this digital marketing stress!
And that’s why, cari amici miei, I stopped offering managed social media services in 2018. As much as I love helping new businesses get started in the wonderful world of digital marketing, I just didn’t believe that was the best way I could help them.
Even though that’s what 90% of leads and referral come asking me for!
I hope this article makes you see my point of view! If you are in the process of launching a new business, I highly recommend that you:
- do your social media yourself! Focus on sharing your journey, your values and your process with the community.
- invest a few minutes each week looking at the data from both social media and Google Analytics
- try different things and have fun with it
- if you feel like your growth and learning has plateau’d, take a course or hire someone like me for a few hours
In the end, remember, social media is all about connecting with people. Sales from social media are a *happy accident* that can be carefully manufactured, but not the end purpose of social media itself.
