Industry’s enthusiasm for social media marketing risks being a turn-off for consumers, says new study
Industry’s enthusiasm for social media marketing risks being a turn-off for consumers, says new study
Well-intentioned marketers in the retail sector could inadvertently turn customers off by irritating them with their online behaviour, according to a new global research into the effectiveness of social media marketing.
The independent study, conducted by Vanson Bourne and commissioned by customer data, analytics, communication software and services provider Pitney Bowes Software, compared social media marketing trends among 300 marketing directors with attitudes from 3,000 consumers to social media marketing across Australia, France, Germany, the UK and US, covering seven business sectors.
The survey found more than six in ten (64%) retail marketing directors are seeing the increasing importance of social media in consumers’ daily lives as one of the top three trends in consumer marketing today. Only fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) respondents rated the impact of social media higher.
Retail also emerged among the highest spenders on social media marketing, with budgets set to rise from an average 21% of marketing spend this year to a projected 28% in 2013, exceeded only by telecoms marketers.
Generous but cautious
The sector is less exuberant however than the other sectors surveyed when it comes to the emphasis currently placed on social media and how this is likely to evolve in the future. At 64%, retail marketers were well below average in terms of their reliance on social media (69%), with only insurance scoring lower. Likewise, the sector had one of the highest proportions of respondents (9%) who were expecting the ‘hype’ to die down for social media and to simply become another channel to the customer, alongside the public sector respondents (11%).
Retail marketers more than any other sector see ‘improving perception of brand’ as one of the top benefits social media can bring to an organisation (40%) – compared with a 27% average. Of those polled who work in the public sector, only 17% see this as one of the most important gains, as do those marketers in the utilities sector, with those working in FMCG only marginally higher (19%).
In this context, ‘followed’ brands fare relatively well. Nearly half of social media users (48%) were positive towards receiving their marketing messages. The reverse was true of communications from companies people don not follow, of which 40% said they would be annoyed to receive. Furthermore, consumers rated unsolicited marketing (‘spam’) and pop-up advertisements as their worst experiences of social media marketing.
Perhaps most worryingly, 65% of consumers surveyed said they would stop using a brand that upset or irritated them as a result of their social media behaviour.
By contrast, recommendations from online friends hold more sway: 68% said that they investigated these or even made a purchase (15%) as a result.
Companies out of touch
When it comes to interacting with brands, the research shows consumers are most interested in discount or money-saving vouchers, new products and services, and upcoming sales and events. Yet these were bottom of the list for marketers, mentioned by fewer than one in ten of those surveyed. Instead, marketing decision-makers highly rated the effectiveness of newsletters, information about the organisation’s social responsibility and customer satisfaction surveys, all of which emerged as least interesting to consumers.
Identifying which social media channels to invest in was a challenge for all marketers surveyed. While they were aligned with consumers in their emphasis on Facebook as the most popular and trusted social media site, they disagreed about the importance of other social media outlets. Beyond Facebook, marketers devote most of their remaining spend on Twitter (57%) and Google+ (51%). By contrast, consumers prefer YouTube – rated only fifth by all marketers – over Twitter and Google+.
“The retail sector has a lot to contend with – dying High Streets, reduced consumer spending, online competition and never-ending price pressure, to name a few. As a result, marketers have been very focused on homing in on the customer, and their strong interest in social media is testament to this,” said Kieran Kilmartin, marketing director for Pitney Bowes Software in Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Bridging engagement gap
“However, our research shows that there is still a disconnect between marketers’ high expectations of social media, and the lack of desire among consumers to engage. In particular, the continued use of old-school 'broadcast' marketing models risks inadvertently turning people off, and at worst, triggering them to ultimately become ‘brand blockers’."
The research also found that social media budgets in retail will nearly double from 16% in 2011 to 28% in 2013. Yet less than a fifth of respondents claimed that they could establish a link between their social media spend and profitability (19%), compared to 60% in telecoms and 33% across all sectors.
Confirming the link between online engagement and converting new customers was highlighted as the biggest challenge by retail respondents (42%), alongside managing the amount of time and money they spend on social media communities (40%) and deciding which outlets are worth investing in (36%).
