We used to advertise social media management.
We stopped because, for most local service businesses, it sucks.
That does not mean social media is useless. It does not mean Facebook and Instagram never generate customers. It means we became increasingly unconvinced that most local service businesses should pay us every month to manufacture posts that hardly anyone sees.
For some businesses, social media is amazing.
If you sell a product that can be shipped, especially something consumable that people purchase repeatedly, building brand awareness can be enormously valuable. Restaurants, musicians, bands, venues, clothing companies, and visually interesting brands may genuinely need social media. In some cases, it may be the most important marketing channel they have.
But a plumber, roofer, electrician, or trash collection company is not a band launching an album or a beverage company trying to become part of someone’s identity.
People generally do not follow their plumber because they want to keep up with the latest developments in pipe repair. They look for a plumber when water is pouring through the ceiling.
Different businesses require different marketing. Social media is exactly what some businesses need. That does not make it something every business needs to spend money on every month.
People Don’t Usually Search for Local Services That Way
When someone has a broken pipe, they probably are not scrolling through Facebook hoping to encounter a plumbing company’s latest post.
They go to Google. They search for an emergency plumber. They look at reviews, visit a couple of websites, and start calling.
The same pattern applies to many local services. A homeowner does not necessarily develop a long-term emotional relationship with a roofing company before the roof starts leaking. They are not waiting excitedly for the next Instagram Reel from their electrician.
The need appears, and then they search for someone who can solve it.
That is why search marketing is generally a more natural fit for these businesses. It reaches people when they are actively looking for the service, rather than trying to make them think about a service they may not need for another three years.
The Seminar Said You Need a Huge Social Media Presence
A business owner attends a seminar, watches a webinar, or talks to a marketing consultant and hears that every modern company needs a large social media presence.
Now the owner of a roofing company feels like they are already behind.
They need Facebook. Instagram. LinkedIn. Maybe TikTok. They need frequent posts, videos, engagement, followers, and a content calendar filled with things their roofing company can say every Tuesday morning.
Nobody stops to ask the most important question:
Why?
What is this social media activity supposed to accomplish?
Is it generating leads? Is it helping close sales? Is it building a valuable audience? Is it improving customer retention? Is it reaching people who are realistically going to buy something?
Or are we posting because someone said businesses are supposed to post?
Look at What Your Competitors Are Actually Getting
One of the first things I do is look at the competitors who are supposedly doing social media well.
Sometimes a local company is spending a substantial amount of money producing graphics, writing captions, making videos, and posting several times a week.
Then you look at the results.
Two likes.
Five likes.
Ten likes on a particularly successful post.
And many of those interactions are coming from employees, relatives, vendors, existing customers, or other people who already know the company exists.
That does not automatically mean the posts have no value. Social media can help reassure prospective customers that a company is real, established, and still operating. Someone may discover the company elsewhere and check Facebook before calling.
But that is very different from claiming the social media campaign is creating meaningful demand.
If a Tucson service business has 1,000 legitimate followers, that is already pretty damn good. Only a fraction of those followers will see a typical organic post, and an even smaller fraction will engage with it. Fewer still will happen to need that particular service at that particular moment.
The business may be paying to speak primarily to people who already know who it is, most of whom are not currently in the market for what it sells.
Even Becoming a Local Character May Not Be Enough
Tucson has a car salesman who dresses outrageously, screams about selling cars on television, and has spent years turning himself into a recognizable local character.
He has approximately 3,800 Facebook followers.
That is not an insult. Building any legitimate audience is difficult. But it demonstrates the scale of the problem.
This is someone with years of television exposure, an unmistakable appearance, a loud personality, a business people regularly need, and probably more local name recognition than almost any plumber, roofer, or electrician could reasonably expect to develop.
And after all that, 3,800 followers.
So when a consultant tells the owner of a roofing company that the answer is to show more personality, make more videos, post more frequently, or become a local authority on social media, I have questions.
How much time will that take?
How much will it cost?
How many people will actually follow the account?
How many followers will see an average post?
And how many of those people will happen to need a roof while they are looking at it?
A contractor can produce an occasional transformation video that attracts attention. The funny guy employee may appear in a Reel that performs unusually well. But has anyone ever called you and said, "You're funny! Let me buy something from you!"?
It may establish that one piece of content was entertaining.
For a typical local service business, “build an audience through personality” is not a practical marketing plan. It is an invitation to become a part-time entertainer in the hope that a small percentage of the audience may eventually need what the company sells.
If you want to sell roofs by dressing like a maniac and screaming on television for years, you might eventually build a few thousand followers.
If you repair air conditioners, perhaps we should concentrate on helping Tucson homeowners find you when it is 108 degrees and their air conditioner stops working.
Somehow, It Is Never the Platform’s Fault
When the results are disappointing, the explanation is rarely that social media may be a poor match for the business.
Instead, the consultant says:
“You need more variation.”
“You need to post more frequently.”
“You need more video.”
“You need better offers.”
“You need stronger calls to action.”
“You need to increase the ad budget.”
Sometimes those things are true. A bad campaign does not prove that the entire platform is useless.
But the proposed solution is almost always more content, more advertising, and more money.
It is never:
Maybe Facebook is not where people go when they need a plumber.
That possibility has to remain on the table.
If every disappointing result is interpreted as evidence that the business needs to spend more, the strategy becomes impossible to disprove. Eventually, the business owner is throwing good money after bad while blaming the marketing person for failing to make an unnatural channel work.
I do not want to put myself in that position.
A Social Media Presence Is Not the Same as Social Media Management
Most businesses should probably exist on the major social platforms.
Your information should be accurate. Your phone number and website should work. Someone should check the messages. If a prospective customer looks you up, the profile should not make it appear that the company closed in 2019.
Posting occasionally can also make sense.
You completed an unusual project. You hired someone new. You are participating in a community event. You have an important announcement, a seasonal reminder, or something genuinely worth showing people.
Post it.
That is a social media presence.
It does not necessarily require paying an agency to create four generic posts every week:
Happy National Water Heater Appreciation Day! At Bob’s Plumbing, customer satisfaction is our top priority!
Your business probably needs to exist on social media. That does not mean your business needs to become a content creator.
Challenge the Return on Investment
If you operate a local service business and are paying for social media management, ask what you are getting from it.
Not likes.
Not impressions.
Not followers.
Not engagement for its own sake.
Ask how it contributes to the business.
That contribution may not always be a perfectly trackable lead. Marketing does not fit neatly into an analytics report, and people often encounter a business more than once before becoming customers.
But there should still be a credible explanation for why the work is valuable.
If the answer is nothing more than “businesses need to stay active on social media,” I would challenge it.
How active?
On which platform?
For which audience?
Toward what business objective?
At what cost?
And compared with what other use of the same money?
Perhaps that budget would generate more business through search engine optimization, paid search, improving the website, collecting reviews, strengthening local listings, or simply answering the phone more reliably.
The right answer depends on the business.
That is the point.
Why We Quit Advertising Social Media Management
We could still sell social media management. And in the right circumstances, we do.
If you sell a product, especially one that can be shipped or purchased repeatedly, social media can be an excellent way to create demand and build brand awareness. We would love to help develop that as part of your broader product marketing and SEO strategy.
What we will not do is tell the owner of a plumbing, roofing, electrical, or trash collection company that they need an elaborate social media campaign simply because it gives us another recurring service to add to the invoice.
We have apparently been questioning that idea for a long time. An old page on our website began by asking whether people would ever search Facebook for that type of business. We rewrote several paragraphs explaining why Facebook was a poor fit for many local services.
Then we got distracted and left the rest of the old sales pitch underneath it.
This time, we are finishing the thought.
For many local service businesses, there are better places to spend the money.
We should make sure people can find you when they need the service. We should improve the website, strengthen your local listings, collect more reviews, create useful service pages, and remove unnecessary friction from contacting you.
Social media management may be right for your business. But it should be recommended because it fits the way your customers discover and buy what you sell, not because every digital marketing package is supposed to include it.