November 14, 2018

Anna Hubbel, writer at AdvertiseMint, Facebook advertising company

Marketing advice: it’s everywhere. When we struggle, we look for answers. Whether it be from our peers, friends, or the Internet, we can get all kinds of suggestions about why our social media marketing campaign might be failing. Unfortunately, when we receive too much advice, sometimes with explanations that contradict the ones given by others, we throw our hands in the air and just wing it, never truly pinpointing the cause of our failure.

This article serves as a one-stop shop for all possible reasons your social media marketing campaign is failing. Gathering advice from an extensive range of experts, this article gives you feedback from the pros who have been there and done it all in the world of social media. Hopefully, you will come across a piece of advice that resonates with you so you can pick up the pieces from your shortcomings and begin your journey to success.

You Often Talk About Yourself

Laurie Monteforte, an Emmy Award-winning journalist, has managed businesses and non-profit media accounts for years. She was referenced as an expert by The Associated Press, and she recently created Strong Mountain Media, her own consulting company. Her experience as a reporter has given her the ability to transfer her storytelling skills to social media.

Laurie explains why you may be failing at social media marketing:

“You only talk about yourself. Think about that guy at the party who rambles on and on about himself and never asks about you. Don’t be that guy. You can use the 80/20 rule to make sure you’re achieving a good balance. Only post promotional items 20 percent of the time. The rest of your content should be purely beneficial to the user.”

You Have Weak Targeting

Ellie Shedden is the owner of THE-OOP.com, an online digital marketing agency used by customers across the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Czech Republic, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The agency helps small to medium business owners increase their reach and revenue through digital marketing and social media.

Ellie offers the following insight:

“They have not targeted their social media appropriately. Some clients have simply not defined a target market, believing they cater to everybody. Others know their customers, but they have not adjusted social media campaigns to reach them. Facebook and Instagram have advanced targeting options. This feature should be used in all marketing campaigns to ensure the budget is not wasted, showing ads to those who have no interest in buying the product.”

You Don’t Understand Your Audience

Chris Allen is a content marketing and social media manager for PhoenixNAP Global IT Solutions. Chris says, in addition to a lack of clear strategy throughout the sales funnel, people fail because they don’t understand their audience.

“Not understanding your audience is the primary reason certain businesses can’t seem to effectively manage social media. Your strategy needs to include who you are marketing to, why, what is the benefit (to the customer and to your business), as well as relationship building and engagement.”

You Don’t Use Short Messages

Michelle Chuang is the principal at MMS Brand Consulting, LLC and the founder of lifestyle blog Mimistrawberry.com. She has more than 20 years of marketing experience, specializing in the development of effective strategies for businesses in connecting with their customers through digital marketing.

Michelle says a business could be failing in social media if the content isn’t short and clear:

“This is very important, especially for businesses that are looking to use social media to build a brand. The content needs to deliver a clear message or a story to users in the most concise way possible. Particularly, in today’s social media world, there are millions of brands competing for the attention and eyeballs of customers. It is important to be creative and publish informative content to enhance the brand promise.”

You Have the Wrong KPIs

Natalie Athanasiadis is the owner and head of growth at Ormi Media. She is a digital marketing specialist with almost a decade of social media marketing and digital field experience.

Natalie says not having KPIs is reason to fail at social media:

“You don’t have KPIs in place or you have the wrong KPIs in place, and you are working towards vanity metrics such as likes and follows. You get what you aim for. You should aim for business growth and the rest will follow.”

You Post at the Same Times

Nancy Ortega is the director of digital marketing at W. Bradford. She manages social media accounts for small to large businesses, and she is also in charge of channel marketing for brands. She has more than 12 years of digital marketing experience. Nancy offers the following potential reason a business is failing at social media:

“You’re probably posting the same content across all channels at the same time of day. It’s important to log into each social media platform’s analytics to understand when the best time to engage with your brand’s audience. It’s not the same time for each account. Users consume content differently on each channel.”

You’re Not Listening

Jess Riches is the senior digital marketer at Enriches Business, a digital marketing agency she founded with her husband. The agency works with a variety of businesses and industries on managing online brand presence and provides workshops, training, and programs for business owners. Jess has significant experience in running ad campaigns on social media.

Jess says businesses often fail at social media because they aren’t listening.

“They do not listen to the audience. Let’s say they post something, and it gets a lackluster response. Instead of looking at what went wrong, they will blame the algorithm, or worse, not pay attention to the fact that the content had a poor response and then do it all over again. Too many businesses do not learn. This is a major missed opportunity and comes back to refusal to grow.”

You Don’t Have Experience

Rex Kimball is the owner of Mirex Marketing, which provides social media marketing services. He offers businesses advice on how to integrate social media with other channels.

Rex says sometimes businesses fail due to lack of social media experience.

“Businesses try to do it all on their own when that’s not their forte. They should focus on doing what they do best and outsourcing the rest.”

You Don’t Give the Right-Sized Content

Working closely with the company’s founders, Shakun is a marketing professional at Mettl, an HR technology company and talent measurement firm that enables businesses to make precise decisions in talent recruitment, management, and training across industry verticals.

Shakun says a business may fail at social media marketing for a few different reasons, including the failure to see when short-form content is better than long form.

“If your audience prefers short-form content, and you are constantly bombarding long-form content, the chances of driving engagement is quite lean. Offering bite-sized content, on the other hand, that users can readily consume, will do the trick.

You Have No Distinct Brand Voice

Steve DiMatteo, who has been working in a digital agency environment for more than eight years, is the director at Sixth City Marketing. He has 12 years of SEO experience.

According to Steve, a business may fail at social media marketing because it doesn’t have a distinct voice.

“You aren’t separating yourself from the pack. Social media is all about creativity. There is so much noise out there that it’s impossible to separate your brand without carving out a creative niche. Does your Twitter account have a fun, snarky voice? Do you create eye-popping graphics? Are you producing live Facebook podcasts? There are so many unique options at your disposal you can use to grow your audience.”

You’re Not Buying Ads

Louis Gudema, president of Revenue & Associates, has worked on marketing strategies for a variety of businesses, from MIT startups to the Fortune 10. He previously owned a marketing agency for about 12 years. Now serves as a consultant for companies. He is also the author of Bullseye Marketing.

Louis says when your organic social media strategy is failing, you should turn to paid social advertising.

“Companies have a better opportunity reaching customers with paid social media. Uploading email lists to Facebook and other platforms allows companies to reach people. These platforms also have tremendous amounts of data about their members, and you can use that to target ads by demographics, psychographics (interests), and even intent.”

You Don’t Use Keywords

Christina Boothe is the head of account management for marketing agency Story Amp, based out of Austin, Texas. The agency provides its clients with comprehensive social media management. Her marketing experience ranges across a variety of industries, including petroleum, financial, e-commerce, and technology.

Christina believes lack of keywords is a contributing factor to a business’s failure in social media marketing.

“With any content strategy, no matter the platform, keywords are necessary. Understanding valuable keywords and integrating them into social media posts helps ensure that specific content is found when users specifically search for it. A business that is not implementing keywords into its social strategy will fail to properly segment itself and get lost in the noise of other content.”

Use These Insights

Now that you’ve learned why your social media strategy may have been faltering from some of the big-time experts in the biz, you can commence building yourself back up.

Still searching for answers? Check out what experts have to say about marketing trends in 2018.