Reasons Your Social Media Marketing Isn’t Working

Paying for ads and posting content daily seems like the best way to go about garnering a lot of traffic. You get hundreds, if not thousands, of clicks per day, but you are not seeing any growth.

Traffic in and of itself doesn’t mean anything for a business without conversions, but how do you go about resolving this? If you are doing everything right but still coming up empty-handed with your SEO marketing strategy, there are a few reasons you should consider it.

Reflect on these as you revise your current campaigns. It can take time to turn things around, but with some patience and the right approach, you’ll be able to start wielding social media as the powerful marketing tool it is.

1. Your Content Is Generic

Too many stock images, cheesy captions, and spammy hashtags are not well received. In the infancy of Instagram and Facebook ads, this type of post was seen as normal because it reflected the typical aesthetic businesses chose when they promoted themselves.

However, nowadays, companies don’t market themselves as just companies. They build brands that have relatable voices and provide valuable content to their audience.

If your content is recycled, rehashed media that does nothing but promote your business, you can still generate traffic but likely won’t experience any growth or build a loyal following.

2. You Are Not Targeting the Right People

Some companies try to get noticed by any means possible. This happens when they aren’t sure who their audience is, or they’ve chosen the wrong platform and just expect the right people to show up.

The strategy is the name of the game when it comes to social media, even long before you’ve set up your account. Audience research ensures that you chose platforms, photos, hashtags, and even colors that they are most likely to respond to.

You don’t need to stand out among the masses; you need to target a sub-group of people in a specific niche and build from there. Finding your target audience online is difficult, no doubt, but it is worth the effort.

One of the best ways to start getting to know your current following is by using surveys. These are easy to run on both Facebook and Instagram.

You should opt for polls and yes or no questions to ensure your results are measurable and easily interpreted. People are also more likely to respond to a survey that is straightforward rather than one prompting them to manually type out their thoughts or suggestions.

Your target audience online should reflect your primary consumer base. If you make content that doesn’t suit your existing clients, you create a large chasm between who you are marketing to and who actually uses your services or buys your products. Closing this gap as early as possible creates cohesiveness across all channels.

3. You Only Care About Numbers

If your eye is only on getting traffic, SEO won’t pay off in the long run. While the primary focus of search engine optimization was landing on the first page of Google, smaller brands and businesses now have a different focus.

Today, SEO is more effective when it is used to drive growth. That can be through new leads, conversions, email subscribers, or social media followers. Imagine you run a PCP campaign alongside a Facebook ad that generates 10,000 clicks but zero engagement or new customers.

Regardless of the traffic, you ultimately have nothing to show for it. The content becomes a waste of time, money, and energy. Instead, you need to focus on growth through intent SEO. This emphasizes growth-centered content that boosts revenue and expands business. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t care about statistics at all, though.

Ranking high on Google is great, and getting more social media followers makes your brand look more credible. But the quality of those followers, clicks, and views are what matter most. Some additional factors to look at when evaluating your statistics include:

• Bounce rate.

• Average time on site.

• New vs. return visits.

• Direct, referral, search, and paid visits.

4. You are Not Building a Community

Brands are not people, and they don’t form personal friendships online. Being overly casual can come off as unprofessional, but a corporate voice feels cold and disconnected.

Many social media strategies intended to drive business ultimately forget that a community supports all of a brand’s efforts. You aren’t trying to just get anyone who sees a post or ad to engage; you want to get specific people following, commenting, and even sharing your posts to the masses.

Once you learn how to build the right community, you’ll be surprised to find greater success in smaller numbers. A lot of small businesses think they are going to hit it big online, only to become disillusioned by their lack of engagement. This is normal, and businesses need to set realistic expectations when they are looking to grow on social media from the bottom.

While there are many new brands and even working professionals, who amass thousands of followers, this doesn’t spell success on its own.

You may find that having only several hundred followers still drives conversions and increases revenue; it is all about how you leverage the audience you have. Value them, and they are more likely to value you, too in the long-run.

5. Tips for Improving Your Social Media Strategy

Now that we’ve covered some of the most common reasons companies struggle on social media, let’s address how you can make improvements.

The first thing to note is that social media marketing, despite all its complexities, is still just marketing. It is a single channel that requires a dynamic approach to succeed, but it is not impossible to harness.

Personal approaches tend to work better online nowadays than overused, repetitive behaviors. People who are already looking for your content don’t need to be convinced to engage.

They also don’t need to be forced through the sales funnel; guide rather than direct. This gives people the freedom to explore, compare, and ultimately decide for themselves that you are the best way to fulfill their needs.

Whether you are marketing products or trying to push service, consider your target audience’s intent. Search intent in SEO includes informational, navigational, and transactional. The first is when a user solely wants to learn more about something. This is at the top of the sales funnel, so they are not yet ready to make a purchase or even know if they really want what they are looking for.

Navigational searches are what people type in to find a specific site or piece of content. One big mistake many businesses make is misusing hashtags to boost visibility. When someone searches a tag on social media to navigate to a specific type of content, they are not going to engage with something completely unrelated.

Misusing hashtags also makes your brand look shallow and solely focused on being seen rather than assisting and sharing.

Finally, transactional searches are done by people looking to buy something. The content you show your audience in this type of search should showcase features, use strong, descriptive words, and include a few high-quality visuals.

There is no need to “push” the product because people already know they want to buy. They just need to see the specific value and key aspects of what your business offers.