Introduction 

With the emergence of Instagram Reels, Meta ads, and other online marketing technologies, Businesses have found new opportunities to scale up and market their products and services to millennials, Gen Z, and even Gen Alpha. But not all ads give such businesses the desired result. Even with the potential of these social media platforms, businesses often find that the campaigns and marketing efforts that they poured their heart and soul into turned out to be nothing but a waste of money. 

It will be as if the ad didn’t trigger any emotion in the audience's mind, and they just scrolled through the ad, just like a useless reel. This leaves social media marketers and digital marketing specialists analyzing and refining their strategies for better performance and results. 

Reality Check 

Most Businesses still have very little knowledge about digital marketing. They believe hiring a digital marketing employee will solve all their problems in marketing and bring terrific results and revenue to their business. Let me tell you what the reality is. Digital marketing agencies have more than half a dozen Departments to handle just the digital marketing efforts of their clients. Starting from Web Development, SEO, SEM, Social media marketing, Content Writing, Videography, Editing, Graphic Designing, Email Marketing, Online Reputation Management, Video Presenting and the list goes on. When some Businesses Hire the first digital marketing employee, they expect that employee to do all of the above work, which is nearly impossible, and pressuring them takes a huge toll on their productivity and creates a toxic work culture. This often leads to the employee quitting and leaving the marketing efforts back to zero. A solution to this is not hiring a dozen more employees to do digital marketing, but to find employees who can handle more than one task. For example, Hiring an SEO Specialist who is also good at content writing, or hiring a videographer who can do both videography and editing. The ideal focus in such hiring should be on creating quality ads and not a hundred ads. From my personal experience, I have understood that digital marketing or even social media marketing is a Team Effort and not a One Man Show. 

Let me tell you a story of mine. I worked as a social media marketer for a business that had only a few employees. The anniversary of that business was approaching, and together with the marketing manager, we planned to do a video presentation about the anniversary, and we prepared content for the few employees who worked there. All the employees had their part to do in the video presentation, and I was in charge of teaching them. 

I did my best to teach them, and they made good progress. A few days before the video shoot, the employees kept their resignations and never came in from the next day onwards. This ruined all the plans, and I had to sit with my hands on my head. This is also the reality of social media marketing. You have to depend on others to create good content and market it. But not everything goes as planned. This is the sad reality of social media marketing. Similar to such incidents several factors affect Social Media Marketing’s effort and result. 

Let me just tell you some of my findings below:

1. The ad itself must be good 

Random posters or videos do not make an ad good. The visuals, the messaging, and the storytelling must create an emotional impact on the audience. Even if you get your audience targeting right, the ad won’t create the desired result if it doesn’t capture the attention of the audience, create interest in them, make emotional connections, establish relatability, and drive them to desire the product or service you are offering. To create such actions, the visuals must be decent and the content must be relatable. Use high quality gears to get the quality right, both visual and auditory. Remember, our focus is to make great ads and not a hundred ads. 

2. The ad does not work without a strategy 

Marketing and sales funnels serve a purpose. They provide a framework on how to make a strategy. The stages of a marketing and sales funnel are awareness, interest, consideration, conversion and retention. Let me give you an easy idea about this. The awareness stage tells your target audience about your existence in the industry. The interest stage tells your audience that you're a genuine and trustworthy business. Educating your audience is done at these two stages. This can be done using reels, shorts, Meta ads etc. 

The consideration stage tells your audience that even though there are so many businesses that do the same service or sell the same product, they can also consider you and depend on you to get their needs fulfilled. This is done using ad retargeting and bringing your ad to the same audience again. The conversion stage is when the audience becomes your customer and purchases your product or service. A few ways to achieve this are through offering sales, discount sales, testimonials, etc. Finally, the Retention stage tells your audience that they are a part of your business and can visit you again. Coupons, exclusive offers are a part of this stage where the customer becomes part of a community. Create a strategy based on psychology to get better results rather than posting and running random ads. 

3. The right Collaboration is a great investment 

Social Media Influencers hold a great network of audience. Collaborating with the right influencers who have the audience network that your business is looking for will result in great awareness and bring more people into your business. However, if you get the influencer wrong that will result in a waste of money and time. Don’t choose any influencers based on just their followers. Instead, consider their engagement rate (comments, likes, shares), audience relevance, and content authenticity. 

A well planned strategy with the right collaboration can create trust, drive meaningful engagement, and ultimately lead to good business and conversions. The tricky part is to find an influencer whose values and audience network match the business’s brand identity.

4. Sometimes your audience is not on Social Media 

Building your business using social media may seem like a great idea, but what if your audience is not even looking for you on social media, or they may not even be expecting you to be on social media? That would be a completely different story,right? Social media marketing is only one form of marketing and there are a lot of platforms to perform social media marketing. Determining where your audience is a key part of marketing. Getting it wrong can completely demolish your marketing efforts. Remember, your business presence must be made dominant in the areas where your target audience is present.

Understand whether your audience is looking for you in Social Media or Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. If they are looking for you on google, then social media marketing is not the type of marketing you should focus on. It's Search Engine Optimization in which you develop a website and perform techniques to rank your website on the first page of Google when they search for keywords related to your business. Even running search ads will put your website on the front page if you are willing to pay the right amount. This particular marketing is called Search Engine Marketing. 

5. Ignoring the Algorithm Will Cost You 

Social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Facebook etc, operate on Algorithms which are complex programs that help some users’ content reach more audiences with similar interests. These algorithms decide what other users must see and what ad should be given priority. Algorithms of Instagram and TikTok favor short form content, with engaging topics and interactive ideas. Facebook’s priority is on meaningful shares and comments. 

YouTube is interested in boosting videos that have high watch time and belong to the interest area of the user. During my time as a Social Media Marketer, I have seen Instagram asking me to optimize my posters and videos taken in Landscape mode to Portrait mode and doing so will increase my ad’s capability to reach more audience. 

Businesses that fail to optimize their content in accordance with the algorithm will surely miss out on their reach, visibility, and no matter how much effort they have put into creating the ad the result will be disappointment served on a silver platter. Understanding the algorithm means understanding when to post, what to post, and what type of content to post.

Conclusion 

Success doesn’t happen overnight, and social media is just another powerful tool for marketing. It's neither rocket science nor Magic. Not every campaign yields magical results or gives you astonishing results. Businesses must come to peace with the fact that digital marketing is a long term strategy that requires continuous learning, testing, and adapting to the audience’s psychology. As I have already mentioned above, social media marketing is a team effort. 

Don’t expect a single digital marketing employee to bring overnight success and millions of revenue opportunities for your Brand. Brand building and success are the result of months or maybe years of efforts in Web development, SEO, Content Marketing, and every other digital marketing style you can think of. Finding the right platform to do your marketing is important. You don’t want to shout about your bravery in an empty desert. The Algorithm will help you reach new heights if you can leverage its functioning.