“Well my customers aren’t on social media so I don’t need it” is a sentence I’ve heard a fair few times over the last 5 years. Less so now, but still.. I write this because I’ve recently been challenged to explain the power and the importance of social media, when used correctly, beyond direct ROI.
Image via GIPHY
The meaning of marketing has changed, as has the meaning of running a business. Your employees needs must be met or you’ll lose them, your customers needs must be met, or you’ll lose them. There’s too much choice and people are opting for ‘happy’. This is why we look at the bigger picture of your company when creating a marketing strategy. We look at your mission statement before anything else, we look at what you are actually trying to achieve, and how we can achieve that. This is how we create companies that last 100 years, and ensure that every post goes beyond targeting an ROI. Luckily, if you put your values at the forefront of your business model, you’ll meet both sets of needs.
There are two things we must look at to understand how social media is effecting your customer.
We need to understand who your customer actually is.
We need to look at how social media is effecting the world around us, even when we put down our phones
☝️We need to understand who your customer actually is:
In the past, marketing agencies have been encouraged to look at people as data so we can look for patterns and create predictions. We were marketing to age, gender, sexuality, postcode etc. Is that who you think your customer is? If you’re still answering those questions to build an idea of your client base, the answer is no, that isn’t who your customer is., you need to stop. There are two fundamentally huge flaws if you’re doing this. 🧠 The first is mental, we must stop boxing people in by telling them that they must behave a certain way because they are a particular age, sex and live in a place. 👼 The second is moral, I surround myself with people who think the same way as me. On a form we’d all look completely different. We have one single commonality. We have the same values.
In order to succeed we must market to mindset, not big data. You may think your customer is Jade, 47, straight, from The East-End but somewhere in the country there’s a group of 68 year old men who view life in the same way as Jade. Whether they’re straight, gay, trans or anything in between, are you closing yourself off to a whole customer base because you think your customer is Jade? Are you excluding millennials & gen Z whose future income is predicted to be hauuuuuge by not being on social media? Come on people, we’re here to make money! Why else do you think Gucci have gone fully Instagrammable in their flagship stores? Why do you think Natwest have an Instagram account that’s main line of content is focused on spreading the pride vibes? To show they have values, to create a community for a long, happy life.
✌️We need to look at how social media is effecting the world around us, even when we put down our phones:
Let’s play a game. Put down your phone for a sec and pick up a Sunday supplement or a recently published cookbook (the first two things I saw when writing this). I’m going to go head and guess they’re super Instagrammable. Next time you go out for dinner somewhere relatively trendy, tell me your plate isn’t curated to seamlessly fit in to the perfect flat-lay. 🥑 Have a complaint about the trains on National Rail? If you’re not tweeting it, you’re wasting valuable time because that’s much easier than any of the options on the ‘contact us’ section of their website. Billboards, adverts, shop windows, high-street or designer clothes, shoes & handbags have emoji’s integrated into the design.
You may not be on social media, but they are. In some form. They can still talk about you, you must be there to join in the conversation.
Are you truly telling me your target audience doesn’t go on a train sometimes, read, walk down the high street, have a bank account or sometimes walk passed a bill board? 🤔🤦♀️ Ok, sure.