Is Social Media Marketing Worth It?
Updated: Feb 28
In today's competitive landscape, having a strong social media presence is essential. Whether you're looking to generate new customers, keep existing customers coming back for more, or create your own loyal following of customers, showcasing your products and services effectively can set you apart from the crowd a.k.a. competitors. You've Googled "social media marketing" and probably got mixed messages.
I'm here to tell you the simple truth... Yes!
Understanding Social Media Strategy
I'm not going to bore you and talk about how "social media strategy is not just about posting on Facebook." You should know that already and if not, glad you found me. It's rare that I see actual cohesive social media marketing strategies, and that's due to people isolating social into one separate channel.
The businesses who are winning on social understand that integrating social strategy into your other marketing channels is how you push people down the funnel faster and cheaper.
Here's the basics to getting started with your strategy. You or your client must know and understand the following:
Your Customers
Target Audience: Who is your customer? What is their profile? Where do they shop or search?
Visibility: Where can prospective customers find you?
Reputation: Can you be trusted? Do your customers have a good experience with you? Are they telling other people to look for you?
Your Messaging
Brand(ing): Is your brand strong and recognizable? Can people easily identify what you do and how your product or service solves their problem?
Ease of Understanding: How quickly can you explain what you do? Does it make sense within 5 seconds?
Memorability: Can people easily recall who you are? Do they rave about you by name or by your product? Example: "I have a blender." versus "I have a nutribullet blender."
Your Product or Service
Scarcity: Is your product unique or one-of-a-kind? Can you only get your product or service from you?
Cost: Does your cost align with your ICP (ideal customer profile)? Do you offer financing or special discounts?
Benefits: What are the actual benefits of your product or service? Does it solve one problem or multiple? Why is your product or service the best?
If your social media strategy does not answer or solve the questions about... sorry to tell you but, that's not an actual strategy. It's just pretty pictures and text. A real strategy is based on data and facts.
Also, I don't mean asking ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude either. Using AI to try to solve marketing problems is a big no no. I have a different article—How AI Is Actually Harming Your Social Media Marketing Strategy—that breaks down why AI is not the end all be all for marketing strategy.
In addition to your social media strategy being able to answer these questions, it needs to do so in a way that works for the platform they are on. That means you can't just simply copy and paste your Facebook ads onto Nextdoor. Or your LinkedIn ads onto Reddit. Your ICP goes on each platform looking for a specific content type, group, or product/service.
Keep in mind that your strategy should also speak to your customer not necessarily to you. That means stepping outside of the "company" and into the "customer." Think about what they want to see and feel when engaging with you. Think about what information they need, how easily they can get what they are looking at, and the sensation of having it. That needs to be the structure of your strategy.
Now to bridge my initial message about cohesion. Think of marketing as a baseball field.
Customers find you or your business through different channels. By tracking these customers on each platform, you can align your strategy to their needs and push them further down the funnel a.k.a get them to buy or book. Social media is a PART of that marketing strategy. It's another platform where you can be discovered or rediscovered. If your messaging aligns with your customers needs, helps them understand what they need to do to get your product or service, and tells them how quickly they can get it... boom, you solved the million dollar question.
Social Media Ads That Convert Prospects into Customers
Let me start off by saying that it's not "lack of effort" for most people in marketing. No one (well hopefully no one) is hellbent on their campaigns performing poorly or CPR being extremely high. Where they "fail" is by not pivoting or staying stuck in the same technique hoping they can replicate results over and over. Each strategy can follow the same system but not the same technique. Let's break that down:
Marketing Funnel: Sorry, but this is marketing 101. Tofu, Mofu, Bofu exist for a reason. Your strategy needs to incorporate the basics. There is no skipping ahead without misalignment which ultimately leads to bad quality.
Business / Client: Businesses within the same industry are still vastly different. That's like saying McDonalds and Chic-Fil-A are the same. There is NO COPY AND PASTE, no magic formula, and no fantastical Guru that can generate consistent results with replication alone.
System Versus Technique: Think of a system like an SOP. It's just a structured process you use to complete a task. A technique is a specific skill you acquire to actually put the work into completing the task. Example: Everyone knows how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich; however, the type of bread you use, the type of peanut butter or jelly, the flavor of jelly, and the way you spread the peanut butter and jelly are all vastly different. The technique implemented when creating your campaigns is what brings the strategy to life.
The Creative Process
If you're still using the same ad with 10 variations like font changes or color changes, you're killing your campaigns. Or if someone you work with is sending you this garbage, they are killing your campaigns. Andromeda does not reward "sameness" and if you look in the ad the library, you'll see A LOT of ads with "low impressions" because the algorithm does not favor those ads.
Creative Requirements: Making ads that help your customer understand who you are, what you do, and why to choose you in 5 seconds or less. Variations of creatives that align with the differences within your ICP. Inclusivity is more important than ever. Your ICP wants to see people who look like them or at least can relate to them.
Get Feedback From Your Audience: LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMERS. You need to accept criticism and adapt. Staying stuck in your ways will hurt the business long-term. Every company makes micro-changes to test new products or services. I'm not saying rebrand yourself every week, I'm saying keep testing. Your audience will tell you exactly what they want to see.
Branding: Branding is important but don't get too attached to it. Each social media platform has its own unique way of connecting your business with your ICP. Memes, videos, static images, messaging, events, etc. are all different places where your customer can engage. Each one can represent the brand differently but still adhere to the basic principles of the brand. Example: You would not message someone "hey beautiful" on LinkedIn but you most definitely could on Instagram.
Customer Journey
The best ads in the world WILL FAIL if the customer journey is difficult or broken. I've seen it countless times. Staring at ads manager questioning how I can see all these intent based clicks, landing page views, and GA4 showing 3-4min avg. sessions. Then I click through the ad and the website is broken, a form is not submitting, or a phone number is not working.
Take Yourself Through The Journey: I want you to pretend you are the customer for a second. Preview an ad and actually click through. Ask yourself, how is this relevant? What information should I gain? How easy can I connect with this person, product, or business?
Confirm Your Forms Work: Bad web development will kill your conversions every time. Just think about it like this, I want you to read this article. Imagine if this article took forever to load or you had to zoom in and out of the page to read it on your phone. That would make you exit and probably lose trust in me, let alone want to contact me.
Call To Action: Your CTA on your ad should align (as much as possible) with how the customer will get in touch with you. "Book now" usually means providing a business with contact information. "Buy Now" usually means providing a business with your credit card information. CTAs send signals to users about whats expected of them. The right CTA will help them decide faster if this is something they want or don't want.
Social media ads can convert prospects and even previous customers to return to your product or service. You need the right marketing strategy and technique to generate the results that will generate real ROI.
Generating Return on Investment with Social Media Ads
If you want to generate a return from your social media ads, you need to take ALL cost into consideration. Not just how much you spent on the actual advertising but your product or service costs as well. ROI from a marketers perspective is just CPR (cost per result) and the service or product cost.
Example: If CPR is $5 and your product cost $20 that's a 4X ROI. If that product cost you $5 to create then in actuality that's a 2X return. That doesn't account for your shipping cost (if not placed on the customer), your electrical cost, internet, warehousing, staff, time, etc.
Baseline Leads Alignment
Go into every marketing channel understanding the following:
Average Costs: Wordstream has done a phenomenal job with tracking the average cost per lead/customer in each industry. Make sure you know the range in which you could incur by using Meta, Google, Bing, LinkedIn, etc.
Break Even Zone: How many customers do you need to generate in a months time to break even? If you don't know this... stop spending and start calculating.
Marketing Spend: Your total amount of spend will determine how much that marketer can generate in a months time. If you only have a $500 monthly budget but you're selling a roof install, you're not going to generate 100 customers on Facebook. That's the truth and a fact. Make sure your expectations are in check with the reality of marketing.
Reach & Impressions
Yes, reach and impressions are important because that shows you how visible you are on the platform. But these are not the end all be all metrics. If you are looking for booked jobs, new patients, new customers, etc. you cannot rely on reach and impressions alone. Real social media strategies that generate results focus on:
Intent Based Clicks: Tracking website clicks that matter. This improves retargeting audiences.
Conversions or Leads: Split testing how you generate new customers is essential to determining how your audience wants to get to know you, your product or service.
Cost Per Result: Your cost per results is telling you something important. This numbers help determine if something within the strategy or funnel is broken or misaligned. To generate ROI you need a process that gets customers to convert quickly. The lower your CPR, the greater the return.
Testing & Pivoting Strategy
Putting all your eggs in one basket is an easy way to become pissed off with results. A great strategy will work, but an exceptional one involves more and more testing. Businesses that succeed make changes to their marketing strategy. Instead of hoping one campaign will continue to generate, they create MULTIPLE campaigns. They kill the ones that aren't performing and test something else. They don't just stop testing because they think they've solved their marketing with one successful campaign.
I've seen social media campaigns that were performing for 3+ years start tanking due to a couple algorithm updates. Even worse is when Meta removes interests or adds restrictions to audience types. Once this happens, you're rebuilding and wishing you had at least tested a couple different ideas to see if something else could gain traction.
Or even worse than staying stuck on the magical one campaign is never pivoting the strategy based on the market demand, seasonality and nature of the platforms. If you notice that every summer your Nextdoor ads take off and your Facebook ads die down, why wouldn't you scale Nextdoor? Pivot the strategy, the budgets, the ad types, the creatives, ALL OF IT.
What Does All This Mean, Sam?
Social media marketing CAN work, but you either need the skills or to hire someone with the skills. No magical "Guru" or 18 year old fresh out of college with a marketing degree.
The businesses and people winning on social are doing this:
Focused on Strategy: No silver bullets, quick wins, or any of that bullsh*t. Actual strategy that makes sense.
Utilizing Multiple Social Channels: You might think Reddit is unhinged but its got more SEO power on Google than you realize. Ask your favorite AI about Reddits relationship with Google.
Working Smarter Not Harder: Even your favorite influencer has "a team," that helps them with networking, events management, speaking engagements, podcasts, editing, scripts, lighting, etc. because they know they cannot do it ALL. If they are doing it all, it came with TESTING and trying to figure out their audience.
Using the Data to Their Advantage: All of these platforms have tracking capabilities. If you use them right and set them up strategically, you'll see exactly whats happening when your customers come to you. You can replicate results NOT STRATEGY. Using data you can make informed decisions on how to capitalize on your audience and WIN.
Conclusion
Either work with someone or an agency that can help you generate the results you're looking for from your social media strategy. Make sure you vet this person or business and align your goals. Be transparent. I've seen the best marketing strategies fail because of misalignment, poor operations, and dishonesty. If your product or service is actually great, it WILL sell. Especially on social media! Drop a comment if you need help with your social media strategy and tell me what you're struggling with!
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