What Happens when your Business "Takes a Break" from Search and Social Media
Social Media Management, Advertising, and Search Engine Optimization are expensive. What happens when you turn them off for a month to save money?
SPOILER ALERT:
Next month your web traffic will drop by -50%.
Much like Jennifer Aniston in friends, she didn’t want to commit. She and Ross went back and forth for like 10 seasons, only to end up together. We see the same with a number of our clients - They get cold feet committing to a $1000-$2000 per month spend on their social media, social advertising and SEO combined. They want to take a break, conserve some funds, and see if they can find better value somewhere else.
So the question is - what have we learned from this exercise?
Your Web Traffic will be cut in half within the first month
We watch clients’ web traffic drop 50-55% in the first month of stopping social, paid social, and search engine optimization. This decline will continue over the next two months, as any remaining organic trace of your brand in social disappears.
Your Page Views will be cut in half within the first month
Not only does your traffic drop, but the average number of page views drop as well. Because people haven’t come to you through a social media or search message (ex. check out our new product!), they don’t come to your site with the hope to view specific content. They come, check out a page, and leave - as opposed to reading a blog article, clicking through to the product or service, and ideally clicking a contact form (three pages viewed in this example).
Your Brand will no longer exist in Social Media
One of our clients went from 13,000 view in a month on LinkedIn, to 45 views when they took a break from their social advertising campaign. Their brand was being viewed 13,000 times per month, and then disappeared. Poof - you no longer exist to your existing customers who follow you, you aren’t putting content in front of potential leads, and you aren’t showing your employees what your company is doing as a thought-leader. Think about how many times you access social media per day - per week. Now think about the consequences of your brand not being present there whatsoever. 13,000 times.
Your Search Ranking Drops
Without fresh content being published to your website (like a blog), without more people searching for Keywords that your site contains, without any traffic coming from social media channels or other websites - your search rank is going to tank fast. You’ve invested so much to be ahead of your competition. That’s all about to be undone.
Your digital leads dry up
Leads are expensive and therefore valuable, especially cold leads coming through your website. It takes time to build up a presence on search, on social - a presence substantial enough for a stranger to reach out and request more information from your business. Once you get leads flowing, an interruption in communication will put you two steps back and require more incremental work to build them back up again.
The Takeaway
If you can afford to keep your social and search efforts moving forward, it’s more expensive to take the break. Digital communication, engagement and lead generation is all about staying-power and momentum. The more content your brand pushes out into Search and Social, the more prominent and accessible it is. The simple equation is: the more visible you are = the more leads you can generate. If you aren’t visible, you aren’t growing existing customers organically, nor are you finding new ones. For the return on investment, digital communication is one of the best if you’re willing to maintain it.