Six figure monthly revenue, and I'm really bad at social media

I saw a post a few days ago asking if you need to be good at social media to run a successful business. I co-founded three businesses with a combined monthly revenue in the six figure range, and I’m not good at social media. I’m not a privacy advocate who thinks social media is evil, I just simply don’t know what to say on social media. I have a Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. But I’ve made less than 5 posts in the past year. This is why I gravitate towards sites like Indie Hackers, and Reddit because the long form structure makes a lot more sense to me.

Some, but not all businesses can survive without social media

Two of my companies have a very small social media presence. Sure we have a Facebook, and Instagram but it’s not very active, and it hasn’t driven any meaningful business to us. The other company is very active on social media and primarily relies on social media to acquire customers.

What separates the two?

Price!

If you want to get away with not having a social media, you need to have a product that can support a higher price point. Social media can be really good at reaching a lot of people, who are willing to pay a few bucks to try something out. However, in my experience it’s not good for targeting people for higher priced goods and services. If you want to run a startup with no social media I’d highly recommend targeting a minimum price of $100 a month, or $1,000 LTV.

The other company I cofounded with my fiancee. Her company helps realtors who (like me) have no idea what to post on their social media. She’s the complete opposite of me, and is a social media genius! Seriously our dog has over 2 million views on Tik Tok.

https://www.tiktok.com/@wolchansky/video/7071898870065712430?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7078019188480902699

Her price point is less than $50 a month, and pretty much 100% of her acquisition is from some form of social media. It’s a very viable business, and it’s doing really well. However, a big pain point is just how hyper price sensitive her customers are. Even at her super low price point, the main reason people churn is because “it’s too expensive”.

How to grow without social media

Social media is just a channel. It’s a way to let potential customers know about your product or service. There are many other channels besides social media. These channels are typically expensive and/or time consuming, which is why a higher price point is necessary to pull this off.

SEO

This has been a main driver for my leads. When you have a good website, and someone is deliberately looking for your service all you need is a good ranking in google. This has been one of the main drivers of business for me.

Industry Relationships/Business Development

Who in your industry can you partner with? Join forces with them, have them promote your product and you promote their product. This has been a huge channel for us in my SaaS.

Direct Sales

I know this is taboo, but yes as an Indie Hacker you can cold call or cold email prospects! We drove at least $20k MRR through this channel alone.

Industry Specific Blogs

Almost every industry will have some specialized blog, newsletter, or organization. This is a really good way to get your product in front of a very targeted set of eyeballs. If you’re in a B2B niche, these will usually be expensive but they’ve always been worth it for us.

There is a great book called “Traction” by Justin Mares, this book was the inspiration for me to find my “channels” and put all of my resources into the channels that have been proven to work. For me the channels above worked, but social media did not. This is why I forged ahead without even thinking about social media.

I will finally be investing in Social Media in 2022

Even though we’ve had great success without the use of social media. For me personally, I think it’s the right time for us to invest in having a better social media presence. A big reason we are doing this is because we feel like some of our channels are starting to reach their peak. We are already the number one spot for many SEO keywords, now we are starting to see diminishing returns in that channel.

We have a few other reasons why we are pursuing social media in 2022.

Sales Enablement

The biggest reason why I want to invest in social media in 2022, is to make our sales easier. In the two businesses without social media, the client has to book a call with a sales rep before purchasing our service. During this time the prospects go into crazy research phase, and they look at everything including blogs and our social media. I believe with a better social media presence these customers might be more likely to purchase our services.

Investing in this area would not have made sense in the early days. I’m thinking this will only increase conversion by 3-4%. When 3-4% only means an extra $100 in your bottom line, there is much more important areas to focus on. However, now that we have much larger revenue, 3-4% is a meaningful amount of cash that we’d like to sustain.

Brand Credibility

This one is somewhat ego driven, but I want others in the industry to take us more seriously. I feel like a lot of the titans in the industry don’t take us seriously when they see we have no social media presence. I also believe most people think we are much smaller than we actually are when they see our social channels are basically a ghost town.

Maybe I’m Wrong

I’ve always thought that leads from social media aren’t willing to purchase high priced services. I still feel very confident in this hypothesis, but I could be wrong. There is a small possibility that social media could be a very valuable source of leads, and I just never knew how to capitalize on them.

Closing thoughts

Social media is not necessary to start a business, especially if it’s high a ticket item. If you’re not a huge fan of social media I’d recommend partnering with someone who is, or focus on some of the channels I laid out above.

For more posts like this, make sure to follow me on Twitter. JK