Can you have a business without social media? Of course!
Can you survive and thrive without social media? That’s a different conversation.
Too often social media has become interchangeable with social media marketing. This has led to the unfortunate misconception that having a social media account is a silver bullet toward sales success.
Silver bullets kill werewolves, but they often kill intention and growth as well.
Businesses that utilize social media streams to grow their bottom lines treat it like professional marketing, not casual communication. Professional marketing requires that you plan, strategize, and adapt.
If you launch or relaunch your channels – digital or otherwise – without understanding your audience, your ideal customer, thinking about the landscape of your competition, and determining which messages and mediums are best for you – you’re destined for the same doom as the wolfman.
It should come as no surprise that I believe in the purposeful power of social media marketing. HOWEVER, I believe in you and your product MORE. This blog is dedicated to helping you decide if you should ditch social altogether.
All businesses need a website. Period dot T. End of story. All businesses need to claim their Facebook business page. Facebook is the third-largest search engine in the world. Even if you’re not using it for marketing, you need to list your location, website, and products to make sure you can be found.
With that baseline established, there are those that could just – NOT – do social media marketing and those that could just – STOP.
If (a) you’re a new, startup business, or, (b) you’re an established business that’s never used social media, and/or (c) you’re in a desperate rush to make money, increase sales, and improve your cash flow, then I believe that you could safely consider NOT engaging in social media marketing.
If you’re an established business looking to protest against unethical business practices, refocus your efforts due to staffing shortages, reduce costs to fight inflation, or are worried about mental health issues and burnout, then I believe that you could safely consider STOPPING engaging in social media marketing.
SMM requires transferring your offline network online and that is always a slow process. Brand voice, customer service, and product trust is easier to build in person. And converting interest into purchases is also faster when you’re focusing on your footprint from the beginning.
Making a call to reach out to the people you’ve worked with in the past, share what you’re up to, and have at an ask. That is far quicker to close friends, neighbors, and colleagues than starting from scratch with new “followers”. Offline you can leverage the trust you already have.
Offline you also have as many, if not more, options to market your business than online, and you don’t have to do hashtag research for them or learn a new dance.
- Business Cards: Designed correctly with the most impactful information, and a business card can represent your brand, leaving a lasting impression. Beyond just a name and a url, business cards can play host to a linktree qr code, a coupon, or other creative ideas.
- Networking: For those business cards to work, you have to be willing to plunge into group events. Chamber After Hours. Community Fairs. B2B Coffee Clubs.
- Self-Promotion. Wear a tshirt, carry a bag, wrap your car or invest in a window decal or magnet. Be bold in being your own biggest fan. Treat your employees with respect and loyalty, and they’d probably help promote too!
- Community Outreach: This is things like sponsoring a local team or placing product in the goodie bags of highly attended charity events. This is most effective when the event or organization aligns with your ideal audience and your true passions and commitments.
- Trade shows: This will take research, but with the return to in person events, bridal fairs, home shows, seasonal festivals, and professional development conferences are back and thriving.
- Ambassadors: Even in the smallest communities, there are those individuals who are highly involved. Leaders with good hearts. Mom’s with popular blogs. Restaurants where everybody goes. Partnerships with these people can be a big boost to your brand’s credibility and clout.
- Local Advertising: I know it’s hard to believe, but shop local works for advertising too. Maybe not your local paper, but local radio, business magazines, parenting journals, even billboards and, dare I say, bus ads, are very viable options for small business.
- Digital Tools: This one is last because anything online feels a little social. But if you haven’t already, curating an email and text list is a way to keep in touch with customers and offer incentives for them to stay customers and bring their friends or colleagues along.
That is by no means an exhaustive list of offline marketing options. We didn’t even touch on hosted events and earned media. But it should show you that there are legitimate, established, and even fun ways to reach a huge audience without ever posting on social media.
You wouldn’t be alone. The exodus from social media is real. Much like fashion brands are exiting fashion weeks in favor of guerilla marketing new lines, many businesses are leaving social media in favor of “old school” efforts. LUSH is maybe my favorite example. It works for them both because philosophically, it’s a focus on health and sustainability, and pragmatically, they have an unquestionably unique physical footprint. They take up space in the world that people notice.
And isn’t that what we’re all trying to do? Take up our authentic, inimitable space in the world so that people take notice. That’s what I want for all of us – myself included.
Doing that for a business takes real, honest reflection and critique. Before making any marketing decisions, analyze your resources. While a few offline marketing options can be accessed for free via the hustle, most require money, and they all require time. What resources you can commit to marketing will allow you to predict how far your message will reach and how effectively it will influence your audience. The more you have of both, the more impactful your efforts will be.
Also, and you may find this point a bummer, but marketing is never about what you want to do. I’m not saying you can’t be creative, or try things that align with your brand. I am saying that you need to market where your audience IS. If your key potential customers are women in their 20’s, you should think long and hard about eschewing social media in general and tiktok in particular.
IF you decide to eschew social media marketing – there will be people who FREAK OUT ON YOU.
This may be because their entire business is based on social. That’s just not sustainable. Once something is posted on a social media stream, it’s no longer yours. You don’t own that content, and you can’t reclaim it. If the app or stream shuts down, is bought out, or just changes the rules, all of that content and collateral is gone.
THEY will tell you that you HAVE to have an SMM strategy to increase web traffic.
Yes, but you have to have an engaged audience, set up your analytics and provide a reason for your audience to go to your website. People often think that social media can do all of these things as an intrinsic value of social media, not as a result of the actions taken on social media. These benefits can be achieved by other means such as collaboration, authorship, corporate training, etc. Be strategic about lining up where your audience exists and how your product is promoted, and you can have web traffic without social media.
THEY will tell you that you’ll never be able to retarget audiences offline like you can with SMM, and so you’re eliminating flexibility.
This is another example where they are equating social media with paid social media or professional social media management. To retarget you have to have the pixel installed, know your audience, have a sequence; it requires a level of training and expertise that can take you away from the tangible work of your business.
THEY will tell you that your customer service will suffer. That is debatable. If you are dealing with customer service online then the assumption is that you have the capacity and support to do so! If you’re handling an issue online and then you have to stop because you have a client call or something coming up that could look bad.
If THEY are not your advisors, partners, coaches, board members, or anyone actually trusted and invested in the success of your business, DON’T LISTEN. Be thoughtful, strategic, and intentional, working with heart and integrity, and your business can thrive, with or without, social media marketing.