5 Reasons Why Your Business Should Not Solely Depend On Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing is huge and many companies are relying on social media marketing for reaching their potential customers.

Investing in social media marketing is a necessity and it needs to be done for sure. However, solely depending upon social media marketing for your business is not recommended. At the beginning of social media marketing, there is a mutual benefit between the social media platforms and the businesses. However, as the dependence of the businesses starts growing on the social media platform, it no longer remains mutually beneficial and it is often the businesses that have to face the brunt of it. Here are a few reasons why your businesses should not solely depend upon social media marketing.

1. There have been instances of social media outage 

Back in October 2021, there was an outage of Facebook services that included WhatsApp and Instagram. Even though the outage did not last for a long duration, the impact of the same was felt by many small businesses across the globe who were heavily dependent on these social media platforms for their business. The outage of six hours across the globe kept billions of users from around the world at a standstill. 

In addition to that, there have been instances of ban too. For instance, India has banned TikTok and recently, Russia has banned Instagram. Without another form of marketing or online presence, the businesses are placed at level zero again. To avoid such a situation, it is important to engage in multiple forms of marketing. 

2. Social media marketing does not guarantee huge visibility 

More than 3.5 billion daily searches occur on Google and if you are solely focusing on social media marketing, you are missing out on a huge deal. For instance, Cool Photos in a social media story will mostly vanish after a day. Social media marketing creates visibility on basis of the purchased ad space and that is very short-lived. However, if you focus on improving the search engine optimization on your website, the effect of the same is long-loved and also, it can be done for free of charge. In addition to social media marketing, you should also focus on ranking your website and business on search engines too for sustainable growth of the business. 

3. Social media platforms work like rented space 

Even though posting on social media platforms makes it look like you have control over the content that you have posted, it is just an illusion. In reality, you do not have control over the content that you post on social media platforms. You do not know after making a post, how many customers will see them in their news feed. Setting a brand logo as WhatsApp DP or Instagram display pic, might be lost but the content posted on an everyday basis won’t. Also, with changes in rules and regulations, your content visibility may decrease or might be eliminated altogether. Also, if social media platforms do not favour the content that you are creating, you might end up losing your community too. In short, it is like a rented space that controls you. 

4. It is only a bridge 

For making sales, most of the time, you need to drive the traffic from social media platforms to your websites. In short, social media platforms only work like a bridge to your website. Even though social media marketing can be used for reaching potential customers, solely focussing on it means that you are missing out on other bridges. Try to drive the traffic from as many sources as possible to the website. This will require you to go beyond social media marketing alone. 

5. Existing content might be difficult to find 

The thing about social media marketing is that the content you publish will be visible to the users only for a few hours or days. After the said time period, it becomes difficult to find the content back as it moves down the timeline. This also means that you do not have any control over the placement of the content that you are creating. It simply means that your best content might not be visible to the customers in the long run and that is a huge loss for sure. 

Social media marketing presents a great tool for increasing a brand personality and for creating brand awareness. In addition to that, it also provides a way to engage with the customers directly. However, for growing the business, one needs much more than social media marketing. According to a survey conducted by Marketing Insider Group, social media marketing only 3% of the traffic to the website. On the other hand, 48% of the traffic comes from organic sources. One needs to act accordingly for real business growth.