It's never very far along in the evolution of any digital marketing landscape that marketers get caught up in the fast-changing nature of those developments. Thus, it isn't unusual to see businesses latch onto social media as a panacea for boosting engagement and brand recognition. For veteran marketing practitioner Pedro Porto Alegre, however, this perception, as widespread as it is, is fundamentally flawed. The marketers tend to get caught in the merry-go-round of vanity metrics, focusing merely on measuring engagement through likes, comments, and shares while accounting for less when it comes to business outcomes. This blog travels through the common misunderstandings marketers make about social media marketing by using appropriate research and evidence to uncover the right way to unlock its full potential.
The Engagement Trap: A Deceptive Strategy
Many marketers commit to the fallacy that their social media mirrors their customers' behavior. They have spent so much time on these channels; they assume their customers have too. It keeps them tied to dangerous habits like measuring success through real-time metrics like click-through rates, impressions, and leads. Reliance on vanity metrics creates a false sense of accomplishment, noted by Pedro.
According to a Nielsen study, which analyzed 450 campaigns, there wasn't any correlation between return on investment and engagement on social media. Although engagement has been proved to be an indicator that there is some kind of interest by the consumer, it doesn't nudge sales and may not eventually lead to constructive brand loyalty. Brands must shift away from such metrics and work more at strategies that suit long-term growth.
The Reality of Social Media Reach
The two studies, however, declared that social media organic reach of an organic post-whether it is an old brand or new brand-is very low. One of the classic cases in point is Oreo's 2013 viral tweet with the Super Bowl Blackout. While this was touted as one of the greatest marketing moves, the numbers say otherwise. The over 15,000 retweet wont about more than just around 64,300 users. That may be true but a viral post reaching only 0.2% of Oreo's annual customer base of about 40 million Americans is too futile by any analysis.
So what's the bottom line? Organic reach is just never going to be enough, not even for the biggest brands. The chances are infinitesimally small of being heard on social media platforms - 10,000 pieces of content that the average user encounters daily-time-cutting through all that noise. Paid promotion is now a necessity if one wants to meanfully reach any audience.
Paid Social: A New Equation for Growth
The second myth is that social media is an inexpensive marketing tool. Marketers are floating on their dream of viral content without paying for media. Chances are, though, that such campaigns achieve virality only with the support of traditional media, like TV or radio. For example, the world's largest Cheetos statue in Alberta was viewed more than 1 billion times just after it was featured on mainstream media like Jimmy Kimmel Live.
But research always indicates that paid social advertising is necessary to tap into the valuable "light buyers" — customers who may not follow your brand, but they're quite important for the growth. A study by author of "How Brands Grow," Byron Sharp, suggests that it is the light buyers who drive most of the sales. If your social media isn't paid promoted, you're just recontacting those who already care about your brand and are in no way reaching this all-important audience.
Vanity Metrics: The Hidden Costs
Pressure to measure the success of campaigns quickly puts a heinous responsibility on marketers within small and medium-sized businesses to demonstrate effectiveness in the short term. CTR, impressions, and leads yield standard weekly reports, but the mania to track every slight decline can lead to an overreaction that brings about far more harm than good.
According to Pedro, engagement metrics don't translate to business outcomes. Instead of holding marketers hostage with real-time data, marketers should move their social media efforts more in line with the bigger business goals of brand awareness, reach, and customer action-for example. "Engaged" is apparently not the way to get growth, Nielsen's meta-analysis of 478 global campaigns showed.
A Smarter Approach to Social Media Marketing :
So how should marketers approach social media in order to make it work for their brands? Pedro shares some key strategies from the APG's book, "Eat Your Greens,":
Clearly defined objectives:
Brief campaigns for social media marketing just as you would for traditional channels. Give clear business goals and insights to guide your efforts.
Choose the right platform:
Do not dilute your efforts. You should choose the number of social media platforms that align with where your brand's positioning is and where most of your customers are most likely to engage with you.
Focus on attention, not clicks:
Instead of clickbaiting content that just churns clicks, try for something that's worth people's attention and closes to your brand values.
Invest in paid promotion:
Organic reach is minimal, so don't shy away from investing your budget into paid social campaigns to expand your reach and attract new audiences.
Don't obsess over real-time engagement data:
Stop focusing so much on short-term metrics and zero in on what really matters — whether your campaign reached the right audience, resonated with them, and led to a desired action.
Final Thoughts
Social media can be a powerful tool in the arsenal of a marketer if done right. Most marketers, however, are more concerned with running after vanity metrics and hoping that organic reach will increase; that will not move any brand forward. What marketers need to do is rethink their social media strategy, keep an eye on the long-term goals of the business in mind, and embrace paid promotion. In the opinion of wise Pedro Porto Alegre, the future of social media marketing should be treated like any other classic channel: based on careful planning, clear objectives, and a strategic investment.
Thus, by aligning efforts with overarching brand goals and getting out of this shortsighted obsession with short-term engagement, marketers can really tap into all the potential of those platforms and push sustainable growth forward.
Comments