Many brands enter social media because they feel they have to, so as not to “miss out”. They read about Old Spice’s Mustafa or get forwarded the Double Rainbow meme and have visions of millions of adoring people sharing and talking about their brand for zero dollars invested.
They start a Facebook page or open a Twitter account, quickly realize it is a commitment, and after telling their agencies that they want a viral idea, one of two things typically happens:
- Through perseverance they stumble along until slowly, they figure it out
- Upon failing to achieve their viral dreams they say social media is not worth the investment, which they came to realize was more than zero dollars, and thus add to the scrap heap of dormant brand pages that exist in a half-life state of digital carbonite - a permanent echo of aspirations unrealized
Is that overly dramatized? Sure - but it is not entirely unrealistic either. The fact is, Point 2 can be avoided and Point 1 can be optimized by identifying metrics that link back to actual business goals.
Is that oversimplified? Not really - yet I am continually impressed by how few brand marketers think in those terms when it comes to social media.
The reason being is twofold. First, so many agencies falsely claim social media proficiency in order to cash in that it is difficult to get legitimate strategic direction. Second, many marketers erroneously assume that once they have a sufficiently dense following, their message will automatically spread throughout that following, be positively received, and will ultimately result in people falling in love with their brands and buying their products.
Getting “Followers” Is Not The End Goal - It Is Merely A Means Towards One
A recent Digiday article on digital ROI showed that 40% of marketers aren’t measuring social media at all, and for those that do, top metrics include: purchase (67%), time spent (54%), sharing (51%) and likes/followers (less than 33%).
The thing that struck me in this article, other than 40% are not measuring ROI at all, was not so much that these are the wrong metrics, but that these metrics (except for maybe purchase) are actually only part of a solution to broader challenges. However in discussing ROI, marketers often fail to link these metrics back to their business objectives, and are in turn forcing them to stand alone without context for measurement.
Do you need to create greater brand awareness? Is yours a premium priced product in an inelastic commodity category? Are you facing better resourced competitors? The potential challenges facing brand growth are as endless as they are diverse, but I can definitively say that the end solution to any of these challenges is not to get more Facebook “likes” or Twitter followers.
If your objective is to get 100 or 100 Million followers but you are not tying that back to how it solves for your brand challenges, then you are only looking at half of the puzzle, that is to say, you are not answering the real question of; “Once I have this community, what would I like them to do for me and what will I provide in return for that ask?” The answer to the first part of that question is your objective to measure against and the answer to the latter part is your strategy to achieve it.
Followers, time spent or any of the myriad digital metrics are merely just a means to a greater end, and if you look at them in isolation to that end, you are essentially just staring at Plato’s shadows on the cave’s wall. You have to make your metrics tie.
The Need For A Paradigm Shift In Your Marketing Approach
If you follow Social Media and the conversations around it you will hear a common refrain that many, even most, brands/businesses are doing social media incorrectly. I believe there is a lot of truth in that statement and I think the underlying reason for that truth is that social media, really all digital media, requires a paradigm shift in the thinking behind how to build a brand vs. how marketers have traditionally used media vehicles to do so.
Since ages past the basic premise of marketing, in simplified terms, has been: define your target consumer, identify the media vehicles that consumer uses and craft your brand message so that it interrupts the content on those media vehicles and thus “reaches” your consumer. Over time as the types of available media expanded, the concept of “surrounding” your target consumer with your message, or of delivering an integrated message across different media types emerged, but the basic premise of reach and interruption remained unchanged.
The challenge with social and digital media is that the concepts of “reach” and “interruption” no longer hold true in the same manner as they do with more traditional media forms. The reason being is that in digital formats the consumer has infinitely more control over whether or not they wish to see your message. Yet many marketers still approach social and digital media through the same lens as they approach traditional media. They have not made the paradigm shift in thinking from reach based messaging to messaging that adds value to a community, which is what is required for effective digital programming. Facebook provides a convenient example to this point.
Facebook Example Of The Misguided Quest For Likes
In my experience most marketers approach their Facebook programming with the goal of gaining “likes”. Although “likes” can be a reasonable metric, unfortunately the motive behind acquiring “likes” is often to create as large a fan base as possible to deliver your marketing message to, or put another way, to create a large consumer population that you can easily reach with your ad message.
That rationale basically applies a traditional “reach” based approach to a social channel. However, the goal of putting your message in front of as many people as possible is not social, it is self serving, and doesn’t necessarily work in social channels.
Instead of thinking about how to acquire likes and thus expand your potential “reach”, you should be thinking about how you can develop something that people will want to discuss and share. The latter is a fundamentally different approach and necessitates the assumption that people are not automatically going to like your brand or message simply because you are on Facebook and saying something. Rather it requires you to think about how to earn their likes by creating content that provides genuine value to the people you want to follow your brand.
This thinking holds true for all types of social media vehicles, not just Facebook. Beyond evolving their approach to digital/social channels, marketers will also benefit from correctly defining their goals & adapting their message to the medium, both of which I will explore in future posts.
I recently read an AdWeek article written by the Ad Contrarian which basically stated that the prevailing dogma around digital and social media providing an opportunity to finally meet the unfulfilled desire of people to form relationships with brands is bullshit.
I have high regard for the Ad Contrarian and I believe that If you had to read only one industry blog it should be the Ad Contrarian blog, as it is one of the most insightful commentaries on the business of marketing and advertising, period. I also generally agree with the article’s point of view. However I do believe, as is the nature of the Ad Contrarian (and honestly part of what makes the blog great), that the relationship dynamic depicted in the article was painted a bit too black & white.
And now my shades of grey...
I do think the notion that people have an overwhelming pent up need to form deep relationships with their denture cream and throat lozenges is completely ludicrous. That being said, we also have to acknowledge that the advent of digital media has altered the way in which people interact with advertising, in that, interruption based messages (e.g. a TV commercial) now have a harder time breaking through than they did prior to the evolution of the digital space. This dynamic is particularly accentuated in environments that have only ever existed in a digital form (e.g. online), which is why banner ads are, in most cases, completely useless.
The main driver behind this circumstance is the simple fact that digital platforms; whether they are computers, TiVo, tablets, Digital Video Recorders, etc., allow a greater ability for people to control whether or not they see advertising messages, and given that choice, most naturally opt not to. In order to counter this dynamic marketers are attempting to integrate their advertising into people’s media consumption in a way that compliments vs. interrupts the experience, and unfortunately in doing so, have created this distortion that people want to form relationships with brands the way they do with other human beings.
There is a relationship people want with brands and its parameters are simple:
- Provide me a quality product that meets the need it promises to meet (this includes appropriate levels of customer service based on the complexity of the product and/or category)
- Provide it at a price that is competitive
- In some instances, again depending on the product and/or category, provide me with a self-image boost derived from the cache the brand provides
For those two to three things, I the consumer will provide you with a limited amount of loyalty until you screw up.
That is it. What vehicles you use to communicate your part of the relationship does not change the parameters of the relationship, it merely changes the parameters of the communication. I will further extrapolate on this point in another post titled “The Stupid Shit Brands Do On Facebook”
