We’ve all heard the Latin term “caveat emptor” – buyer beware. It’s a phrase used in commerce to indicate (at least in my non-legally trained mind) that the buyer needs to make sure of their purchase because they may not have any recourse to fix any issues later. This holds true unless the seller went out of their way to hide defects. Today, however, I want to flip that notion on its head and explain why sellers need to beware.
I read a report this morning from the folks at Pitney Bowes Software about the use by brands of social media. While I’m not really surprised by the data I am kind of disappointed. The poll of consumers found “that marketers need to be careful to make sure they are not overcommitting to social channels, and, moreover, that their actions on social media are aligned with consumer preferences.” As eMarketer reported:
Adding to the need for marketers to approach social marketing somewhat cautiously, consumers have displayed time and again an indifference to—or at worst, annoyance at—marketing messages pushed at them on social media, instead preferring to use such platforms to engage in more conversational interactions. And it should come as no surprise that consumers were predisposed to marketing messages from brands and companies that they had already chosen to “follow” or “like.”
The annoyance rate of consumers who saw ads from brands they followed was 11%, but jumped to 24% for those confronted with social media marketing messages from brands they didn’t follow, showing that tolerance for unsolicited messages was noticeably lower.
The alarming thing is that another survey showed 57% of those who had seen a sponsored story on Facebook thought it appeared as content in a misleading way, while 45% thought the same about Promoted Tweets. This sort of activity has a residual effect on consumers. They don’t like being mislead and retain negative feelings about the brand that sent out the commercial message under the guise of a social interaction.
Every few days it seems I have a conversation with a marketer who wants to use a social channel as yet another megaphone the way we used to use older media. The paradigm shift doesn’t seem to have happened yet in many marketers’ minds. As the research shows, consumers know the difference and aren’t appreciative when brands misuse a social channel. Sellers need to beware – the long-term effects will be a problem.
Make sense? So what are you going to do about it?
Consult Keith 