SOCIAL MEDIA ARE FAILING MARKETERS

By Frank Eliason

Forrester research made a splash this week by stating “Facebook is Failing Marketers.” Needless to say it is causing a firestorm online among marketers and social media gurus. In an open letter by Forrester analyst Nate Elliot he cites a survey of marketers conducted by Forrester regarding online marketing satisfaction. In the survey Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and You Tube rounded out the bottom four with LinkedIn and Mobile not far behind. Leaders in the survey were On-site ratings and search marketing. The open letter cites two reasons for this dissatisfaction. First the amount of engagement brands see via their Facebook page and the fact that it has not really evolved in the past 18 months. The second reason is the company is not “good enough” at pure advertising business which Facebook has shifted to. Here is a graph of the findings of the survey. Below the graph I provide more detail on the report and my own thoughts.

Most importantly the report highlights the shift in focus Facebook has had toward marketing. Facebook has the potential to redefine marketing, especially based on audience size, data about people and as it states the potential for genuine interactions. In the report Forrester recommends marketers back away from Facebook until the company genuinely changes their ways by better building bridges between Customers and companies as well as offering better ad targeting capabilities.
 

In a similar report, Adweek features an article titled “Why Brands Suck at YouTube” highlighting the poor performance brands have found on the site. The article based on a study by TouchStorm study (please take with a grain of salt since Touchstorm does video distribution on the Internet). The article uses example such as BlendTec outperforming Pepsi and Coke or the Mormon Church outranking Apple and Microsoft. According to Touchstorm brands are not embracing what their audience wants and encouraging repeat viewership by converting viewers to subscribers.

 

Here is my view
 

I am surprised it has taken this long for Forrester to attack the performance of Facebook. It is something we have seen developing for years. The challenge is the space has evolved making it less and less relevant for brands in the eyes of the Consumer. The shift to mobile has made Facebook pages virtually obsolete. People very infrequently drift outside of their newsfeed on mobile devices. This is why the ability of Facebook Apps to gain traction has gone down dramatically in recent years. Although this is not the only reason for the downfall of Facebook Apps, the other reason is users are not sharing branded content like they used to. One recent study of sweepstakes found that only 11.8% of participants shared the Facebook app with others. In the past that number was well over 50%. You add to that the way Facebook shares content (known as the Facebook algorithm or Edgerank) only 5-15% of their friends would even have the potential to see it in their newsfeed. In my view more is going on here as well and it is all worth learning from, including the YouTube study.

 

1) Brands as publishers - Brands are struggling as publishers because they are too focused on themselves or their products. We have to learn to offer something of need to our Customers so they would be willing to share with their friends. Companies own websites are often the best places for this content, but allowing sharing capabilities so others can take the message forth.
 

2) Social Media being over promised and under delivered - Over the past few years we have seen many people step on the social media scene to proclaim themselves as experts in the space offering new tools or grandiose returns. All of the social channels were among them, but also agencies (both pr and marketing), consultants and others. Every day I receive hundreds of spam emails from companies proclaiming to have the social media answer, yet why would these companies use spam email over social media which they proclaim to be so good at? I think one of the reasons Facebook is ranked so low on a survey of marketers is the expectations these marketers originally had was always way too high for what Facebook could achieve in terms of business results.
 

3) Why are they there? - Why is anyone in any of these social media channels? The fact is most people are not in social media to interact with brands. They are on Facebook to interact with family and friends. They are on Twitter to meet new people. They are on LinkedIn to find a job. These may seem basic but they are important facts to remember. Imagine talking to a friend at a party and then someone jumps between you as an advertisement. That is really what brands are doing at least at this point in social media.
 

4) Offline is the new online - This trend has been building for years but it is one we have been talking about in social media since 2007. We are moving to a phase of social media that requires people (Customer and employees) to be the ones to take a company's message forward. This requires Customers to want to share the good experiences with a brand (and brands to create good experiences) and employees to do the same. Think about in this manner, in the offline social situations brands are discussed all the time: Where did you get that outfit? or Where are you going on vacation? Social media is no different. Very few brands have achieved this at scale. The best examples are Apple or Coke.
 

5) Asking the tough questions - In the past companies relied on vanity metrics such as likes, fans or followers. As time has moved on companies have noticed a few trends, first they have a million fans but a post gets very few likes or comments. Why? They also start to ask more detail about how did we get the fans (most of the time it was due to advertising on Facebook), then they want to know more about them. Are they our Customers? Prospective Customers? Are they a human beings? These are questions that often can not be answered today. They then want to know if the content on these social channels, beyond impressions have led to measurable business impact. So have we seen a lift in the number of Customers taking advantage of X benefit or buying Y product? Some have answered this, not always to their expectations but most avoid the question.

6) Finding Context – Social media will always be about context. Going back to the party example mentioned in bullet 3, imagine if providing information was timely? If the conversation was about making a financial decision and the ad was about helping with that. This would be more powerful than interrupting a conversation about babies with an ad for auto insurance.
 

There are deep changes taking place that I have the ability to witness from a unique vantage point. I expect brands will start to see these changes more clearly over the next year. Brands will start to better understand the business impact or in some cases lack thereof, they are having in social media.

We already are starting to see brands back away in some cases, but others are becoming more aligned not with the product but instead with their Customer. I expect the companies that get more aligned will also shift gears and learn the benefits of the data and how to properly use it in their business. Data will continue to be a challenging topic especially with the NSA issue in the US. I expect further regulations in the US and EU based on this so brands will need to be cautious. This is not the first such study of its kind, nor will it be the last. Social has always had deeper impacts in the relationship organizations have with Customers and employees. We are just at the point where firms such as Forrester are noticing in a deeper fashion.


The customized approach of consultant Basil Venitis combines deep insight into the dynamics of industries with close collaboration of the client, in order to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. Basil Venitis, venitis@gmail.com, http://themostsearched.blogspot.com, @Venitis