Leo Burnett social media director Nicola Swankie has urged brands to ask why their consumers would care about content they post to social and give them reason to share it, following a new report which said 83% of consumers have had a bad experience with social media marketing.
The report was commissioned by
technology solutions firm Pitney Bowes and conducted via market
research company Vason Bourne. It said 34% of consumers believed they
had been spammed by social media marketing, while 14% said ads or
promotions they received weren't relevant to their interest.
Eighty-three percent of respondents said they had a bad marketing
experience on social, while 6% claimed to have been hacked while
providing information.
The study also claimed 65% of consumers said they would stop using a brand that had "upset or irritated them" through its social media behaviour, said Pitney Bowes Software Australia and New Zealand general manager Simon Bird. "That’s a pretty big deal considering the survey showed social media activity is estimated to be 25 per cent of marketing budgets in 2013," Bird said.
Nicola Swankie, social media director at Leo Burnett Sydney, said that while such statistics should be taken with a "grain of salt", there was likely some truth in them. "The content [and marketing] brands post on social must as engaging and appeal to the consumer as much as possible," she told AdNews.
Before posting content, companies must question why their consumers would care about it and give them reasons to share it, Swankie said. She also argued brands which receive negative feedback on social about their marketing methods should take it into consideration and not ignore it.
The study, which took place in August and September 2012, interviewed 3,000 adult social media users across five international markets, being the UK, France, Germany, the US and Australia. It also conducted online interviews with 300 senior marketing professionals working in the same markets across several sectors including retail, telecoms, FMCG and utilities.
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