When is staying off social media the soundest strategic decision for your client?

Social media is almost an automatic part of most strategies I develop for my clients and, in most cases, it is an absolutely necessary element. But this is not always the case, especially when working with high-net-worth individuals (HNWI). A client, a performance coach working with elite football players, came to me for a full repositioning project. The goal was to move the business into the luxury category and to attract the top players. The repositioning involved several elements, but my most controversial recommendation was to abandon social media and avoid the strategy most performance coaches adopt (showing videos and images of work with clients and publicly recording the process).

The reasoning behind this decision was rooted in understanding how professional football players select their coaches and how much privacy is valuable to them. It was clear from the start that reaching the most elite athletes and the ones that are already established required word-of-mouth and not an Instagram post. In this case, the lack of a social media presence was as much a business decision as a branding one. It was used to signal a greater power balance between my client and their potential clients. It was also part of the service branding, as privacy was embedded in all elements of the performance coaching service packages.

This social media strategy (or the lack of it) worked. It was part of the broader overhaul, but players consistently said they loved that there was no social media presence. It reduced their feeling of being used to advance someone else's career, gave them confidence that they could work and progress in private, and, most importantly, made the business appear exclusive and selective in who they work with. As with other luxury brands, this perception of exclusivity and belonging to a "club" eventually drove demand. And no social media was needed to achieve that.