Nathalie Nahai: If brands want to use social media to boost sales, they have to work with customers
As Nike and other ecommerce businesses begin to tap social media sites for revenue, one of the questions we face is how best to optimise the experience so that customers and businesses can both get what they want.
One of the most tricky challenges businesses face in this arena is how to avoid eroding trust when they attempt to convert people on platforms used primarily for social interaction. Image-led platforms such as Instagram, for instance, are potentially a great fit for encouraging users to cross the threshold into paying customers, not least because typical browsing behaviours tend to be driven by the desire to consume, albeit visually as opposed to financially. In such instances, facilitating a purchase directly through the platform can work as a natural extension to the user journey because it provides an additional step that the customer can take, without the need for coercion or hidden tactics.
In contrast, platforms that are more text-based, such as Reddit, Twitter, Whatsapp and Snapchat, may fair less well in this game, owing to their linguistic structure and content, as well as the culture their communities create. These havens tend generally to be perceived as non-commercial, more intimate and beyond the reach of marketers, which is why businesses and individuals can face such a sour reception when adopting similar strategies.
Whether or not your attempt to convert new customers is successful, the bottom line in either instance is whether the goal of the business aligns with the goal of the people who are using the platform. Most of us have grown up with an internet that is largely open, inherently social and with services that are ‘free’ to use (let’s leave aside for a moment the fact that we’re ‘paying with our data’). We have become fiercely protective over our ‘rights’ to free services and as a result, we tend to be suspicious of and hostile towards those who overtly solicit their services or try to sell us things in these more personal domains.
However, it’s not a problem only from the business side of things. The ways in which a social platform enables such actions can also make or break its reputation (and business model), which is why we see such a divergent selection of methods at play. For example, take Twitter’s rather subtle approach, whereby a user will occasionally be presented with a relevant, clearly labelled ‘promoted tweet’ in their newsfeed. As an avid tweeter myself, I, like many others, take to the platform in order to seek out information, engage in conversation and connect with new and interesting people. It’s a refreshingly uncommercial space but I know that for Twitter to exist, it has to be able to make money and so I am comfortable with being shown content that is likely to engage me. It’s a balancing act that requires precision, care and the ability to finely tune the tone and frequency of each message so that the viewer will at best engage and click, and at worst, not fly off the handle and fire vitriol at the sender.
But not all social platforms take such a transparent, user-centred approach to marketing. Facebook’s newly named News Feed algorithm (formerly known as EdgeRank) employs the strategy of simply presenting certain posts while hiding others – a method that is not only more covert but also more manipulative. Instead of explicitly offering its users the option to see everything so that they can then make their own selections, Facebook’s algorithm makes these choices for them, denying them their agency and the opportunity to decide for themselves. The insidious aspect of this is not that people are served so-called ‘relevant’ content, but rather that they are unaware of all the content Facebook has screened from them because it was deemed ‘irrelevant’ on their behalf.
Such tactics may work in the short term but if marketers are really to make the most of social platforms to increase sales, they need to work alongside their customers, with mutual benefit in mind. This means working to increase the agency of their customers and by extension, the brand’s reputation by ensuring that the content and context are both relevant.
Facebook have taken a leaf from Google’s book of painting the reason for why they do something as being in the user’s interest when conveniently it helps to massively scale their monetisation.
Google uses quality scores to show ads more prominently based on how likely they are to be clicked – the justification being that users are voting with their clicks as to what ads are appropriate. But of course it means Google is likely to earn more from each ad shown – in fact its a smart way to maximise CPM via CPC pricing. They don’t show ads that won’t get clicks because they earn nothing. That is how you build a billion dollar business. But of course, no such objections exist when they plaster Google’s own shopping and comparison products all over the SERPs!
I recently saw Facebook explain that the average user could potentially see 21k posts every time they log into Facebook, but will interact with 5-7. So to make the Facebook experience as relevant and enjoyable as possible they throttle posts from brands and friends you interact with less frequently. Of course they are happy to plaster paid for posts all over your time line.
Interestingly, they seem to realise that too many ads will kill the experience so they are taking a video based ad approach and are looking to charge premium prices (that only the big advertisers can afford!) and milk those advertisers ruthlessly with auto-play (even if they only charge after 10 seconds) and suggested paid for videos under each video.
Twitter is still trying to work out the right way to do the same.
From a user’s POV, this means networks like Facebook are increasingly becoming like a broadcasting network where I only get to see the ads that the big budget advertisers can pay for. I lose the serendipity of seeing messages from old friends that I don’t interact with a lot or who are not that active on the network – one of the best things was seeing them surface occasionally! Now I have less chance to see them. I also am less likely to see ads from smaller local businesses who can’t pay the same rates as Red Bull or Nike.
From an advertisers POV, after having spent a lot of time and money building up a Facebook or Twitter following only to have the gates closed and then be asked to pay premium prices to speak to their own fans, the levels of frustration are high. But surely they should have known this was coming when they saw the IPO valuations of the networks.
The visual networks like Pinterest and Instagram will work better for visual products like fashion and interior design. But not everything is visual. Take home insurance for example – pictures of cartoon bulldogs on Instagram will not make you want to take out a policy. You will need to read something.
The main thing advertisers need to do is go back to basic word or mouth principles about how you make messages and offers go viral and also to think about the very ‘social’ nature of social networks. The one thing the networks can’t stop is ‘me communicating with my friends and family’. If they do that then they kill the very essence of the network.
This means that if a brand can engage, whether by images for visual products or video/text for less visual products, customers, fans and followers to share messages/offers via social then the networks are still a hugely powerful tool. At Buyapowa we combine 3 concepts of smart rewards, gamification and communal targets to allow our clients to scale customer get customer.
It is no longer viable to build up a large audience of fans with competitors and then post kitten pictures (why you ever did that unless you sell pet food is beyond me), but provided brands stop thinking of social networks as ‘just another ad network buy’ then all is not lost.