Social Media Fail to Live Up to Early Marketing Hype
From The Wall Street Journal:
Businesses are looking more critically at social media and its influence on the bottom line. A majority of respondents in a Gallup survey said that social media had no influence at all on purchasing decisions.
. . . .
In May 2013, Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co. bought ads to promote its brand page on Facebook. After a few days, unhappy executives halted the campaign—but not because they weren’t gaining enough fans. Rather, they were gaining too many, too fast
“We were fearful our engagement and connection with our community was dropping” as the fan base grew, says Allison Sitch, Ritz-Carlton’s vice president of global public relations.
. . . .
After years of chasing Facebook fans and Twitter followers, many companies now stress quality over quantity. They are tracking mentions of their brand, then using the information to help the business.
“Fans and follower counts are over. Now it’s about what is social doing for you and real business objectives,” says Jan Rezab, chief executive of Socialbakers AS, a social-media metrics company based in Prague.
. . . .
Gallup says 62% of the more than 18,000 U.S. consumers it polled said social media had no influence on their buying decisions. Another 30% said it had some influence. U.S. companies spent $5.1 billion on social-media advertising in 2013, but Gallup says “consumers are highly adept at tuning out brand-related Facebook and Twitter content.”
. . . .
Gallup says brands assumed incorrectly that consumers would welcome them into their social lives. Then they delivered a hard sell that turned off many people.
More recently, changes in how Facebook manages users’ news feeds have hindered brands’ ability to reach their fans. Rather than a largely chronological stream, Facebook now manages the news feed to feature items it thinks users will want to see.
. . . .
Another reason companies are looking beyond fan numbers is that the numbers are easily gamed. Researchers say many fans are fake, or automated, accounts designed to inflate numbers.
Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal (Link may expire)
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“A majority of respondents in a Gallup survey said that social media had no influence at all on purchasing decisions.”
Yeah. A really reliable research method. You have to laugh.
Yes, notoriously, Gallup only polls landlines, missing huge demographics. Gallup itself is often a fake statistic.
Source?
I am wrong – Gallup says they do use cellphones … the misalignment of their polls in 2012 pointed to that as a problem, but they claim not.
Gallup’s survey was conducted via the Web and mail from December 2012 to January 2013. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percentage point.
“The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 1 percentage point.”
That made me laugh out loud when I just read it
At 95% confidence the margin of error of a random sample of 18,000 is appx 1%.
We don’t know everything about the sampling, but what we do know is consistent with a MOE of 1%.
A lot of people will say that advertising does not influence their buying decisions. Are they correct?
No. I’ve bought many things I would never have heard of without advertising. But the idea that advertising can make us buy whatever crap a company wants to push is just silly, and, now the Internet allows us to directly measure the results of many kinds of ad campaigns, they have to resort to more and more hand-waving to justify many of their claims.
Besides which, if marketers could really sell that well, they’d be the last people you should listen to when they’re trying to sell you their services… because they could make you buy anything.
The dubious nature of the survey aside, there are several points in the article which are useful… at least, when it comes to how some companies have completely mismanaged their social media presence. I’ve seen otherwise intelligent independent (and occasionally BPH published) authors who’ve made similar mistakes, and I always shake my head and sigh when I see them do it.
The “Hard Sell” through social media doesn’t work, but then the hard sell has often turned off a lot of people. And yes, quality of your followers and fans is much more important than quantity — I’d rather have ten real people follow my facebook and twitter accounts than a thousand bots.
Of course, some of these things are… well, patently obvious. But I’ve seen a few authors who I thought should no better make “hard sell” mistakes, or who value quantity of followers over quality. You’d think people would recognize this, but I think some are so desperate, andor are clinging so hard to advice based on the market of two or three years ago (not realizing things have already changed), that they don’t even realize they’re doing it.
It’s a shame, really — some of those people are really very good writers who’ve been in the business for years; sometimes I’d like to say something, but it would come across as “look at the newbie who thinks they know what they’re talking about” at best, or “the arrogance of that guy! I’ve been publishing for 30+ years, and he’s only been in the business for a few months. Does he really think he can tell me what to do?” at worst.
This. I was reading some advice being giving by someone whose been publishing since 1978. I looked at sales numbers he provided, his sales rankings, his websites (couldn’t find many of his over 30 books listed on the book pages on his site or author pages on retailer sites…), and I knew if I joined the conversation I’d be condescended to as “you have nothing published what do you know?”.
What I know is how to build relationships & how to hang out with people who are fairly successful. I know how to listen. I don’t let my ego get in the way of learning new ideas.
Given the fact that people have become inured to much of advertising, fast-forward through television ads, toss junk mail by the armful, and delete spam, this is really no surprise. People hate the bombardment of pleas to “Buy me!” wherever they go.
You don’t need a poll or statistics to know that.
Ask people about their shopping experience. They will almost always say that the advertising has no effect on them; the music in the supermarket has no affect on them; the colours and lighting have no effect on them; the smells have no effect on them and of course tv advertising has NO affect on them.
Shoppers are the very LAST people who have a clue about what influences them when they buy.
While I agree that I won’t necessarily remember that any of this works on me, its funny how the smell of freshly baked bread WILL make me buy a loaf I don’t need, or that the stupid Farmer’s insurance jingle (We are Farmers) or the McDonald’s “tones” get stuck in my head.
Our inability to adequately define how marketing works on us may be the reason why some (most?) of it does.
Shoppers are the very LAST people who have a clue about what influences them when they buy.
Yeah, that’s what marketers always say when they’re trying to sell their services. Just because no-one thinks it works, that means it does work.
Who does have clue about what influences consumers buying behavior?
“Gallup says 62% of the more than 18,000 U.S. consumers it polled said social media had no influence on their buying decisions. Another 30% said it had some influence.”
30% is still quite a few people.
Joanna Penn made her career doing what Gallup says had ‘no influence on [customers'] buying decisions.’ Perhaps Ritz-Carlton should hire her.
If social media marketing is just another trendy, slick PR approach by Big Biz, it will be doomed to failure. And rightly so.
If it’s a sincere attempt to reach out to potential customers, readers, et al, and develop long-term relationships, it will probably be quite successful.
It’s not just the approach, but the attitude, that determines soc med mktng success.