Mistake No. 1: Lack of thorough research on target audience

There are still a lot of companies that don't want to do quality research on their target audience. You might think that it's only the small businesses' problem since they do not have enough resources. But why when we ask even some large companies "what is your target audience?", all that they submit to us is just the gender and average age of their clients... It turns out that this case has nothing to do with resources. Both small and large enterprises can examine their audiences if they find it valuable. In fact, it's not that difficult. For starters, all you need to do is check out what your clients discuss in topic groups, blogs, and forums. But the best way is to conduct in-depth interviews. This will help you quickly grasp the language your audience speaks, discover subtle motivations and directly ask for people's opinions on something.

Mistake No. 2: Neglecting competitors

Some business owners tend to forget to analyze their competitors. Their reasoning sounds something like "I don't subscribe to competitors out of my convictions. I don't care what they do. I'll do it my way. As a result, it deprives the company of valuable information. This approach is kind of a double-edged sword. If none of your competitors uses TikTok, then you can take advantage of it. On the other hand, it may turn out that no one uses TikTok because there is no target audience there. Another example: if companies in your industry do not use video content, you can greatly excel among them just by starting to produce it. But before you make a decision, it's important to find and research at least some tiny arguments in favor of your hypothesis (stories of success in very similar segments, as an option). Otherwise, it's just a random shot, and we advocate a scientific approach here.

Mistake No. 3: Content-for-content approach

This group covers a number of violations:

• The content is not engaging enough. For example, as the content lacks value (or it is so unobvious that consumers don't notice it).

• The customer relies only on organic promotion methods. In other words, there are no extra ways to promote the content. My opinion: you need an initial push to make organics work.



• The customer journey is poorly planned. In such a situation, the customer goes to the account to buy something, but doesn't understand what to click and what to do next. Outcome: the account sells nothing.

By the way, there is the reverse case when the manager puts so much effort in selling content that the customer would not even bother to scroll through the page and decides to leave.

Mistake No. 4: Neglecting social media specifics

We often have to deal with the classic example of companies cross posting (in other words, the content is not tailored to the platform in any way). The thing is that each social media has their own formats and different features which affect the promotion algorithms. Yes, you spend less time on making content, but the effect of this simple duplication is, to put it mildly, controversial.

Mistake No. 5: Exclusive focus on one social media

If cross posting can be applicable in some cases, then promotion in only one social media is very risky. In our agency, we had a case when a client's Instagram account with 200,000 followers "collapsed" (not our fault). This happened at the moment of the product co-launch. It is clear that the launch failed because the entire strategy was based on just one social media . Since then, we always offer our customers at least one more option to make sure this situation doesn't happen again.

Mistake No. 6: Failure to follow and keep up with trends

For a long time, I have belonged to the category of people that do not trust changing trends. It seems that the hype is about to end and there is no point in using it. Now I am convinced that any trends are helpful to us, and we always track them. The point is that customers track them too, and an unaware company risks losing out on the profits. A striking example is when Reels appeared. Ignorance of Reels would mean losing a lot of cheap traffic. I'm not saying that you need to take part in every challenge (moreover, there is no such a trend that can be used by all companies), but you should definitely monitor what's going on.

Finally, I would like to emphasize one misconception, rather than a mistake, that social media marketing is a tactical tool. Expecting quick results and sales from the first post gives a misleading impression. Yes, there are some rare examples of instant success, but in most cases, success follows the approach of regular work, continuous hypothesis testing, analysis, and a clear strategy. This is the only way to build a long-term relationship with the client and raise its Lifetime Value.