Don’t get me wrong, you shouldn’t abandon social media marketing.

It’s still the best way to create awareness for your business since that’s where most of your potential customers spend their time.

But the mistake most people make is they focus all their efforts on social media while not actively building and nurturing their email list.

What if I told you by doing that you either risk losing money or you’re not making as much as you could?

The truth is: social media marketing is like renting an apartment, email marketing is like owning a house.

Let me explain:

Owning the relationship with your audience

There’s a saying in the online marketing world that social media is “rented land”.

Just like how that apartment that you rent isn’t legally yours, you don’t really “own” the relationship with your audience. In fact, you’re technically “borrowing” the attention of your audience.

Here are the things you might not realize about building an audience on social media:

1. Social media platforms can disappear anytime

If you rent an apartment, the landlord can kick you out anytime due to many reasons:

• Landlord wants to sell it
• Landlord wants to move in
• Landlord wants to replace the tenant (you)

It’s scary to think that all the hard work you put into building a following can disappear overnight (due to reasons beyond your control):

• Remember Vine? It was discontinued in 2016 after failing to monetize.
• Myspace stopped in 2011 after declaring they wouldn’t compete with Facebook.
• Clubhouse exploded in popularity during the pandemic but now everybody has forgotten it.

But an email list is 100% yours.

Just like how you won’t lose ownership over your house if you moved to a different location, your email list stays with you even if you change social media platforms.

Nobody can take away your email list.

2. Social media platforms control the visibility of your content

Social media platforms must balance the needs of:

• The users who want to get satisfaction from consuming entertaining and educational content
• The advertisers who want their ads to get seen by the right people (and are willing to pay for it)
• The platforms themselves who need to make enough revenue to keep staying in business

Algorithms control distribution of content. Some platforms have very short content shelf-life, that you’re forced to post more frequently to stay visible (I’m looking at you, Instagram and Twitter/X 🙄). Others will value certain content format (e.g. video) or features (e.g. live broadcast).

And what’s depressing is that creating high quality content doesn’t guarantee distribution.

The result? Not all followers will see your content.

The same goes with renting an apartment: even if you’re a good host, most apartments have rules on how many visitors you can have at a time.

Email is straightforward: don’t do spammy things and it will reach your audience’s inbox.

3. Social media content can’t be personalized for sales

As a business, you’re not posting content for fun.

You’d definitely want a good ROI for the hundreds of hours (and dollars) you spent creating content. Even if you use paid ads to promote your products or services, most people who interact with the ads won’t immediately buy.

Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks: “I’m going to buy something today”.

People go through the “buyer’s journey” before they decide to buy:

• Awareness: They know they have a problem and they want to understand it more
• Consideration: They know exactly what the problem is and want to understand the potential solutions
• Decision: They know the solution and want to pick the right brand/product/service

In sales and marketing, the more specific the message → the more it resonates with the person→ the more likely the person will buy.

You need to have the right message (content) for each stage of the buyer’s journey. This helps them to “warm up” before committing to the sale.

Just like how you can’t renovate a rented apartment—you can’t customize your content on social media. Everybody will see the same thing, regardless of which stage of the buyer’s journey they are at.

With email, you can strategically customize your content.

You can set up rules and automation to tag specific people and segment them based on the criteria you’ve set. For example:

• People who just joined your email list
• People who are exploring solutions
• People who are ready to buy

You can customize the types of email that each of these segments will receive:

• People who just joined your email list → Educate further on the problem
• People who are exploring solutions → Educate on the solution (your product/service)
• People who are ready to buy → Promote the best offer for your product/service

This way, you can better showcase your expertise and your audience will feel heard.

They’ll start thinking: “Wow this person really understands me. This is exactly what I’ve been looking for!”.

Why This Matters

By investing in email marketing, you’re building a stable, reliable foundation for your business. It’s like owning a house—solid, dependable, and entirely yours. You’ll protect your business from the unpredictability of social media platforms and maximize your revenue potential.

• Control and ownership: Your email list is yours forever, no matter what happens to social media platforms.
• Direct communication: Email allows you to reach your audience directly and consistently.
• Higher ROI: Personalized email campaigns drive higher engagement and conversions.

Whenever you’re ready, I can help you:

Build a well-packaged, high-value Educational Email Course (like this one) for your business that will maximize your ROI by:

• Boosting your email opt-in rate (and accelerating email list growth)
• Educating leads on their problems before any sale calls
• Building trust with leads in days instead of months
• Automatically sell when leads are ready to buy

​Book a free call with me.

See you 😁