Yesterday I got into a weird hyperactive Twitter discussion with , and . We all were trying to make different points I think but it was sparked by a comment from Andrew around research tweeted by Sarah.
This research that people don’t want to engage with brands via Social Media has been circulating for a while. In fact I was somewhat stunned to see the huge numbers of industry people gleefully tweeting it on the day it came out (for the very fact that many seemed to be actively dissuading their own clients from working with them).
What’s wrong with the research?
The problem with a lot of stats like these is that it comes from surveys. Without even getting in to the logistics of what was the sample size, who constituted the sample size etc I have a very simple problem with Q&A research like this…
People often say one thing, but behave another way.
This research itself goes on to provide somewhat contradictory feedback like “54 per cent of people admit social networks are a good place to learn about products” and “61 per cent of consumers are driven to engage with brands online by a promotion or special offer.” Hold on, I thought 61% of them didn’t want to engage with brands, so the caveat is unless they’re learning something or getting a voucher?
My point is people don’t necessarily lie, they just aren’t always aware of their own behaviour - hence the contradictory findings of this research. Customer insight also comes from seeing what customers actually do, not just what they say they do.
Don’t ask your customers what they want, give them what they need
The whole ask/show debate has a far deeper learning for brands. Too often Social Media evangelism goes so far towards a happy fantasy world of transparency and cheerful working with customers to ‘crowdsource’ solutions that two realities get forgotten:
- Most people don’t want to tell brands how to make their products and services better, or promote them to their friends (this, I think, is what was at the heart of what the research was trying to say but came out as a silly headline)
- Customers are already giving brands loads of data on what they need which is probably more commercially reliable than simply asking them. From monitoring services to capturing data from online conversations, Ecommerce data, or using Google Analytics to find out how customers find your/competitors products and services. It’s all there waiting for brands
Conclusion
I started off saying I’d got het up about the headline that 61% of people in the UK don’t want to engage with brands via Social Media.
The headline is annoying because it’s not necessarily true but then again also glaringly obvious. I mean, what next, a study that shows that 99.9% of people don’t like hurting animals? A desire to be kind to animals may be present in the majority of the population but only an estimated 3 – 5% of the population are vegetarian.
Human rationale doesn’t always stack up but never fear brands have a lot of other ways to learn about their customers before they start obsessively asking for online feedback.
Tempero on Google+
