Never Make These Social Media Marketing Mistakes Again!
Word Nerd breaks down some of the biggest social media marketing mistakes that small business owners make in the blog below, including:
- Only using the advertising platform’s default settings
- Leaving the target audience undefined or too broad
- Failing to use campaign analytics to inform the strategy
- How to solve these social media marketing mistakes
It’s no question that social media platforms are an excellent tool for helping small businesses reach their consumers. Since their internet takeover in the early 2000’s, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube have evolved to include robust advertising solutions that help businesses cut through the noise.
With billions of active users on any given platform, it’s easy to see why paid advertising is necessary when the competition is so high. While these tools are user-friendly, it can be difficult for small business owners to navigate them properly in order to set up the most impactful campaign. As a result, business owners will often spend hundreds in advertising dollars only to earn little return on their investment.
There are many mistakes that professional social media marketers have learned to avoid along the way. Allow our team to share some of the biggest social media marketing mistakes that we’ve learned how to overcome through our decades of expertise!
The 3 Biggest Social Media Marketing Mistakes That SMBs Make
1. Only Using the Platform Defaults
Responsible for creating some of the most popular social media platforms on the market, it makes sense that the advertising tools for each would be very user-friendly. Nearly all of the corresponding advertising platforms include step-by-step guidance through the campaign set-up process. In many cases, the process begins by simply asking users to select their campaign objective. Such objectives might include:
- Conversions
- Web Traffic
- Followers/Likes
- Engagement
- Reach/Awareness
After selecting a campaign objective, the advertising platform will automatically apply default settings that it thinks will aid in helping to meet that goal. However, these default settings aren’t always ideal — especially when it comes to selecting which type of actions taken result in a charge to the advertising budget.
For instance, when setting up a conversions campaign on Facebook, it might seem logical to set the optimization for ad delivery to “Conversions” (the default setting). Doing so, however, can result in a much more expensive campaign, particularly for small businesses with very niche audiences or those that are still growing their following.
2. Leaving the Target Audience Undefined
While we’re on the topic of the target audience, it’s important to not leave the campaign audience undefined when setting up a campaign. One of the greatest benefits to leveraging social media marketing is the ability to get as granular as possible with audience demographics. Campaigns can be targeted to specific individuals based on a number of unique factors, including:
- Age
- Gender
- Geographic Location
- Annual Income
- Education Level
- Job Title
- Interests
- Consumer Behaviors
It’s helpful to build out an ideal buyer persona when creating the target audience for a campaign. This might follow a formula such as [Job Title] in [Industry Name] making [Annual Income] interested in [Interests/Consumer Behaviors].
Warning: It is possible to over-define the audience, making it more difficult for ads to reach the right people (or to even be served at all). Pay attention to how the different audience attributes that are applied impact the total possible audience for the campaign and make adjustments as needed to avoid issues with the ad delivery.
3. Not Using the Campaign Analytics
Every social media advertising platform comes equipped with a dashboard that allows marketers to take a deeper dive into their campaign analytics. One of the biggest social media marketing mistakes that small business owners can make is failing to use these analytics to inform their strategy. The numbers behind a given campaign will tell a larger story about its overall success or failure, helping marketing teams to make more informed decisions about their creative assets, messaging, and ad spend.
For example, if an ad set is earning thousands of impressions but has not generated any engagements or link clicks, it’s a strong indication that something about the ad’s creative is not resonating with the selected target audience. Another reason why these results might occur is if the target audience was left undefined, reinforcing our earlier point on the importance of a clearly defined buyer persona.
How to Solve These Social Media Marketing Mistakes
Resolving these top social media marketing mistakes takes years of experience to master. The best piece of advice our team can give is to be patient and take advantage of the available free tools and webinars that exist which are designed to help beginners overcome the most common social media marketing obstacles. Below are just a few online resources that can help provide a closer look at how to solve some of the costliest social media marketing errors:
One of the best ways to quickly reverse course with your social media marketing strategy is by trusting a team to do it for you. Word Nerd Creative Content & Design, LLC offers the turnkey social media marketing solutions that small business owners throughout the United States trust to deliver exceptional results. Request a quote for social media marketing services by contacting our team online or calling (609) 498-4223 today!
