Why you shouldn't rely on social media to get customers

Let's get straight to the point. There are companies that have based their business model almost exclusively on attracting customers/users through social networks, especially Facebook, although they are now gradually migrating to others such as Instagram.

Don't depend on others

Depending on another company to survive as a business is like playing Russian roulette every morning with a revolver that you neither load nor know directly who loaded it. In fact, you don't even know if the bullets are blanks or as lethal as a fall into the void.

Two examples of Spanish companies that have seen their business pale when they succumbed to this way of playing cards are Playground and Hawkers.

Facebook

But let's take it one step at a time. For a long time Facebook has been closing deals with media outlets to fill its social network with quality content. The social network sought to be a news aggregator so that users would use its application to learn about current affairs and thus get users to spend more time on it. However, just a year ago it decided to radically change strategy and abandon the companies that bet on its platform.

But this change, which dragged newspaper publishers through the mud, affected other companies as well, as news and updates from the brand pages were also no longer relevantThe messages were replaced by messages from the groups in which the users were in.

By touching up the "wall"in which users saw all the content from the people and companies they followed, they saw more content from friends, family, and groups, and less content from companies, brands and media. No matter what interests users had, when the algorithm changed, they would now see far fewer updates from these types of pages.

In practice, what did this represent? that Facebook was trying to get brands and companies out of the feed main. Its objective was that companies wishing to have notoriety in the social network would go through the cashier's desk and will pay for advertising if they wanted to remain relevant among their regular readers. In short, what was once free became paid for.

Now let's turn to the two examples we mentioned at the beginning.

The Spanish eyewear brand Hawkers was created by four young people from Elche that burst like a cow in a china shop into the optical industry. based on 'hypeand virality through social networks. Low-cost glasses and a strong presence in the networks. The result: resounding success, and why? investment in advertising was low considering the costs of using social media (which is free) to create brand identity, outreach and advertising. But by changing the rules of the Facebook game and literally kicking brands off the walls of Hawkers' customers, the firm had to increase its spending on advertising investments in order to maintain stable sales. This led to a disproportionate expenditure in customer acquisition costs that made their business model unsustainable. In addition to this, and we do not know if it is related, the company is now facing the worrying departure of its two key executives, Francisco Perez, CEO of Hawkers, and David Moreno, co-founder.

Our second example is Playground the Spanish media outlet that was hype itself by proclaiming itself to be the Spanish-language media with the most views on FacebookThe company announced its transatlantic expansion, whereby, through an agreement with the international group Ole CommunicationsThe company's Latin American subsidiary was located in Miami to reach the markets of Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Chile and Brazil. A success based in part on viral videos very much for millennials like the famous 'Velaske, I am beautifulwhich had led him to reach 27 million fans on social networks.

But 2019 left coal on the desks of Playground's workers as the company announced an ERE for half of the workforce. Facebook's new algorithm again seems to be the cause, in part, of the debacle by causing visits to drop sharply over the past year. Similar Weba web site that audits Internet traffic, has done the numbersIn six months, the nearly 13 million monthly visits dropped to four.

In a nutshell

There is never a single cause for a drop in profit.s. It can always be attributed to various reasons. So it would be unfair to blame Facebook for the fall in profits of the two companies we have given as examples. Especially if we point out that it was the talk of the last few years in the digital marketing sector that the numbers that Facebook published were not reliable at allwith a Facebook acknowledging failures in measuring the reach of its postsand errors in video metrics, among other measurement problemsaccording to a complete list published in the United States. Therefore, we intentionally basing part of your business model on a few metrics with feet of clay, knowing it, is not very smart.

Despite the doubts in Facebook's metrics, everyone seemed to find it convenient to believe them, Facebook, advertisers and media. But regardless of that, if all of this is of any use to us, it is to learn to put social media, and the click obsession, in its rightful place..

Want promoting a business through social networks was a great idea a few years ago.for a contained cost, what it used to cost you to have a community managerYou could have a continuous presence on the platforms that your business target used on a daily basis. Today, this policy can only be a complement to a broader communication strategy.These platforms have already become the new magazines, the new roadside billboards, the new television stations and the new radios.

In short, if you want to appear on social networks as a brand, you will have to spend money on advertising within them. Your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn will only have an acceptable diffusion if they are under the mode. "sponsored post".

Game Over. Insert coin.

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• Cover image by Elena Koycheva
• This article contains information extracted from the publication Magnet y El Confidencial