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Q: When it comes to customer acquisition, how important is paid social media compared with other digital channels? — John L., Houston

Social media has created a beautiful opportunity for entrepreneurs: It’s never been easier to get your message in front of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people. But if you want to reach all those people, it’s going to cost a lot.

It’s a simple case of supply and demand, and social media platforms are limiting the supply. Organic reach — that is, your ability to speak directly to the audience that chooses to follow and interact with your business — has dwindled to almost nothing. On Facebook, for example, organic reach touches less than 5 percent of your audience on average. Facebook simply doesn’t show your posts to most of your followers … unless you pay for the privilege. That’s one of the reasons why advertising inside social media has become increasingly expensive, as brands outbid each other in a competition for users’ attention.

Suddenly, social media isn’t such a great deal. If you’re on a budget, all of this can brutally limit your growth and acquisition opportunities.

That’s not to say you should stop using digital platforms altogether. Paid social is a hotbed of marketing insight. With just a small amount of cash, you can easily test headlines, imagery, and offers on different audiences. That’s valuable research. However, if your entire acquisition strategy depends on paid media, you could pay your way right out of business.

But there is another way! You just need to diversify. In the digital world, there are many ways to acquire customers: paid social, paid search, email acquisition, organic social, organic search (earning traffic through content), public relations, influencer marketing, and earned media. Start by identifying a few channels where you want to focus most of your efforts. (Ideally, at least some of those channels will not require the spend of ad dollars.) This way, you can test what’s working while building an omnichannel approach that will pay off down the road.

Read more: How Much Should You Spend on Social Media Marketing?

When it comes to social media marketing, there’s a lot of misinformation, and a ton of unrealistic expectations set as a result. Luckily, marketers are blessed with a massive amount of data from social media activity, so we can course correct misnomers which may lead to disappointed bosses and upset clients.

A recent study conducted by Sprout Social surveyed both marketers and consumers, in order to help identify key challenges, and offer insights on what users expect when it comes to social media marketing. After all, if your strategy isn’t meeting their needs, it will fall flat.

Here are eight key stats of note from the data, which may help inform your strategic approach.

1. “47% of social media marketers say that developing strategies which support business goals is their top challenge”

First off, I want to be direct in an observation on this point. If you’re not strategizing against what matters the most for your business, and working towards achieving that outcome, you’re not marketing. You’re just “doing the things”.

Read more: 8 Social Media Marketing Stats You Shouldn’t Ignore

Have you been spending countless hours and tons of money in an attempt to improve your social media marketing? Social media marketing can be difficult to master for many businesses. With so many companies on social media, it’s hard to stand out from the crowd and truly connect with your target audience. Plus, social media isn’t just for sharing news and chatting anymore. It’s a full-fledged platform for marketing, e-commerce, customer service and more. That’s a lot to manage.

But with artificial intelligence (AI), you can not only make your social media marketing easier to manage, but you can get better results as well.

Here’s how AI can improve your social media marketing capabilities.

24/7 Online Presence

Gone are the days where consumers have to wait until the next business day to hear back from a company. The online world is fast-paced; you can’t afford to miss a comment from a potential customer because they can simply move on to the next company’s social media profile if you don’t respond. Luckily, with artificial intelligence, you can create a 24/7 online presence. You’ll be available to provide support and answer any questions from your customers, no matter the day or time. Of course, you won’t actually be providing the customer support via; it’ll be AI in the form of a chatbot.

Read more: How AI Can Improve Your Social Media Marketing