TikTok’s future in the United States remains uncertain as President Trump’s extension of ByteDance’s deadline to sell looms. Will there be a deal in time? Will the Chinese social giant hold firm? The app’s American future is unclear. But this isn’t TikTok’s only problem—Australia recently raised its minimum age for using social media to 16.
These changes have raised alarm bells for businesses relying solely on social media to drive sales. If a social platform goes down, so does any business heavily reliant on that platform. With the shifting reality of social media, developing a marketing strategy that doesn’t rely on social media is the safe option.
The risk of social-only marketing
Dillon Hill, the founder of marketing and fractional agency Cosmoforge, saw the writing on the wall a decade ago. His marketing journey began with a personal crisis. “A childhood best friend of mine was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and I dropped out of college… We put together a documentary series… Ironically, it went very viral on social media,” he says.
The documentary was a smash success that garnered press attention and led to a bone marrow donation drive through social media. “We actually ended up breaking a world record for the largest bone marrow donation drive,” he adds.
But repeating that success wasn’t so easy. “We thought… ‘Hey, we have a lot of attention on us. Let’s try to help other people with cancer,’” Hill explains. “It didn’t really work out too well.” The second campaign didn’t have the same momentum as the initial burst of excitement.
This experience taught Hill a valuable lesson. “Social media is a very fickle beast. It’s not something you should build a company… on because trends change [and] people’s expectations change.” While social media can be a good strategy for reaching leads for free, it’s not the right model for every business.
Most of Hill’s clients don’t rely on social media—and neither does his agency. “Our clients are in a position where if someone submits a form [inquiring about their services or purchases their products] on their website… that is usually worth about $500 for them. Their target audience is not typically people who are ready to buy or engage on social media,” he says. Hill’s clients are lawn care professionals, power washers or e-commerce businesses that sell highly specialized products like the car port covers for an RV. “So very often we recommend they don’t do social media, certainly not organic, but more than likely also not paid social media.”
The timeline for converting social media attention into revenue poses another challenge. “If you get some sort of awareness, let’s say you’re running a Facebook page like a normal business might,” Hill explains, the return on investment isn’t immediate. “Someone… stumbling across your business might not pay off until six months or a year down the road.” This delayed conversion creates measurement challenges. “It’s very difficult to attribute your efforts to revenue in that case.”
High-value marketing channels to consider
Instead of relying solely on social media, there are some other avenues to explore. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising offers immediate access to interested customers. “The intent is there,” Hill says. “You can typically get right in front of people who are looking for a service.” If you’ve ever seen a sponsored ad at the top of Google, this is a PPC ad.
This approach can speed up the sales cycle significantly. “We know their intent right off the bat,” Hill explains, as PPC ads can be hyper-targeted to a specific audience ready to purchase or seriously considering an investment. “It’s much easier to capture that.” Hill’s clients typically spend about $15,000 per month on a mix of PPC and Meta advertising, he says, with the majority of that budget going to PPC ads.
Email marketing is another reliable channel. Hill emphasizes its importance even when using social platforms: “Even if we do something on social media, the idea is… to get their email because that’s really where the growth is going to happen.” Unlike social media, where an algorithm can de-prioritize a video or an account can get shut down, a business’s email list is theirs for the company’s life.
If you’re a small business without the ability to run paid ads, then driving your social followers to your newsletter is a great way to make the most of the free traffic. Hill recommends this strategic pivot for businesses heavily invested in social media. “If your budget allocation on social media is 100 percent around the idea of generating revenue, pivot… over time,” he says.
Transitioning to a different strategy
The transition should be gradual. “Over the next six months, [your social strategy should] no longer be 100 percent [about] driving revenue.” Instead, Hill recommends 75% driving newsletter subscriptions or any other first-party data with the remainder of a company’s social efforts focused on sales. First-party data is directly owned by a business, meaning it can’t be subject to the whims of changing platforms, political upheaval or other sudden shifts.
This type of strategy enables more sustainable customer relationships. Hill suggests implementing a referral system. “Share this [newsletter] with your friends, and you get $5 off,” he says, noting that many email newsletter platforms have built-in referral systems that allow for easy attribution of which customer referred which new client. This drives new customers to the business without having to spend a lot of extra money.
According to Hill, a non-social strategy can also increase customer lifetime value (CLV). “Focus your newsletters around… maximiz[ing] reoccurring revenue,” he explains. When businesses focus on email as a channel for increasing lifetime value, the additional revenue can be significant.
“Whereas in the past, maybe a social media campaign generated an average [CLV] of $5… because you’re focusing on email, you can [raise] an average customer value from $5 to $10,” he says. Email makes it easier to do hyper-targeted marketing that incentivizes a return customer.
New businesses face different considerations. “Regardless of the ban, I would encourage them to be hesitant about social media,” Hill advises. He particularly cautions against a social-only approach because the results can be unpredictable. “Just posting every day on TikTok… takes so long to see results.”
Instead, Hill advocates for direct customer acquisition. “Get in front of the customer as soon as [you] can,” he says. Efficiency matters for new ventures. New businesses “don’t have the time to post and get a follower who may or may not be [their] target audience.” They’re often cash-poor and can’t afford the risk of running out of money, but with traffic sources focused on conversion, Hill says that a business can build an audience of the right people.
However, he emphasizes the importance of self-sustaining systems. “We also want to make sure that our growth can exist by itself, and we don’t have to keep putting money into the [paid ads] machine for the rest of the business’s life.”
As social media faces increasing regulation worldwide, businesses new and old must adapt. Building a marketing strategy that doesn’t depend on social platforms is necessary. Through a mix of proven channels like email marketing and paid search, companies can create sustainable growth without risking their future on any single platform’s success.
Remember Hill’s hard-learned lesson: “It’s not a very detailed, in-depth relationship you have with people on social media, as we’re seeing now with the TikTok ban.” Many influencers and their audiences moved from the ByteDance-owned platform to competitor RedNote.
But with every move, a certain portion of the audience will be lost, leading to lost income and opportunity. A diversified approach to lead generation ensures that shifting social strategy will have a minimal impact on a business.
Photo by Ground Picture/shutterstock.com
