The standard division is that the social agency produces clicks and someone else owns the website. It sounds clean and it produces a specific failure: the campaign hits its click target, the site converts poorly, and neither party is accountable for the outcome anybody actually wanted.
The handover is where the money leaks
Social traffic is less patient than search traffic. Someone who searched had a question and intent; someone who tapped a link mid-scroll is mildly curious and will leave at the first friction.
That makes the landing experience disproportionately important for social. A page that performs acceptably for search visitors can perform badly for social ones, and the analytics will show it as a social problem — low time on page, high bounce — which sends everyone looking in the wrong place.
Three things that waste social spend
Load time on mobile networks. Almost all social traffic is mobile, frequently on a poor connection. A page that is fine on office wifi can lose a substantial share of visitors before it renders. This is the single most common leak and the least often checked by the team buying the traffic.
Landing on the homepage. A post about one specific thing linking to a general homepage asks the visitor to find what they came for. Most will not. The fix costs almost nothing — link to the relevant page.
A mismatch between post and page. If the post says one thing and the page says something else, the visitor concludes they were misled. This happens constantly when the two are written by different teams who do not speak.
Why SEO and social are not separate problems
They share the same destination and frequently the same fixes. Page speed, clear structure, a page that answers the question it promised to answer — search rewards all three and social conversion depends on all three.
Splitting them across two suppliers means neither owns the page that both depend on. Each optimises their own metric, both hit target, and the thing you were paying for does not happen.
This is why website development and SEO are included in our social retainer rather than sold separately. It is not generosity — it is that charging separately to fix the thing that makes the first service work is charging twice for one outcome, and it produces worse results in the meantime.
What to check this week
- Open your three most-linked landing pages on a phone, on mobile data rather than wifi, and count the seconds.
- Check where your social links actually point. Homepage links are a common and easily fixed leak.
- Read the top post and the page it links to, one after the other. Do they promise the same thing?
- Look at what a social visitor is asked to do on arrival. If the only option is a demo request, you are asking a curious visitor for a large commitment.
Agree who owns the number
If you keep the functions separate, at least make one party accountable for the conversion rather than the click.
Otherwise the monthly reports will both be positive — clicks up, site fine — while enquiries stay flat, and every meeting will be about whose metric is more real.
Common questions
Why is social media traffic not converting?
Most often the landing experience rather than the traffic. Social visitors are mobile, on variable connections, and less patient than search visitors. Slow pages, homepage links instead of specific pages, and a mismatch between post and page account for most of it.
Should the same agency handle social and the website?
Not necessarily, but someone must be accountable for conversions rather than clicks. When the functions are split with no shared metric, both suppliers can hit target while enquiries stay flat.
Does page speed affect social media campaigns?
Significantly, because nearly all social traffic is mobile and often on a poor connection. A page that loads acceptably on office wifi can lose a large share of social visitors before it renders at all.
Where should social posts link to?
The specific page matching what the post was about, not the homepage. A general landing page asks the visitor to go and find what they came for, and most will leave instead.
Website development and SEO are included with our social retainer rather than sold as upgrades — see social media management or what it actually costs.
