Why Social Media Alone Isn’t a Winning Marketing Strategy

Social media is a marketing tool. It should not ever be your sole marketing strategy. With the recent banning of TikTok content creators and small businesses in the United States are set to lose 1.3 billion dollars. Yes, with a B. TikTok was popular because its top-secret algorithm led to higher visibility and engagement over competitors like X and Meta. Meta teamed up with Google and spent millions of dollars to lobby in DC against their competitor and after the Chinese-owned app appeared in front of Congress and refused to sell the company or algorithm, TikTok is set to sunset in America on Sunday losing over 120 million users overnight.

With the United States' current tech climate, it's important that we are not leaning on social media as the only source of marketing.

Other countries that have banned the app include Afghanistan, India, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, and Somalia. The American exodus leaves lots of room for British, Australian, Canadian, and content creators all over the world where TikTok isn’t banned, to make millions of dollars as they now run the show. If marketing companies were smart in those other countries, this is the perfect opportunity for them to realize that their marketing strategies can now be tailored as their audience is getting more specific.

Brands were built on TikTok, music was discovered, and some life-changing moments happened changing a lot of content creation to small businesses and vice versa. What a lot of these content creators/small businesses did to be successful wasn’t a secret sauce and it wasn’t all TikTok. Social media is a tool. Social media is not a smart marketing strategy because if your core audience is only in one place and that one place disappears, you lose your audience, you lose engagement, and consumers.

The core of a successful marketing strategy includes:

• Knowing your audience (what they love, hate, need, etc.),

• Knowing your brand (this is the secret sauce, your logo, your vibe, colors, tone),

• What is your message?  (what’s your story, why should they care about you, make this fun),

• Where are you going? (This is putting this all together and putting it out there. Social media, events, newsletter, word of mouth, gorilla marketing)

• How do they respond? (Looking at metrics and seeing when and where your audience engages and what they engage with as the same content may not work on different platforms)

  
  

Making things is easier than marketing things nowadays. Just posting on social media is a part of marketing but it’s not a sound marketing strategy. Diversifying your audience is smart in the long run because you reach and engage more people and the higher the engagement, the more consumers you create, the more money and meaningful connections you make.

To market a successful business it’s imperative that you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket. What are some marketing goals that you have for 2025?