Brands like to believe that people really want to have relationships with them but for most consumes the primary reason they engage brands is to get free products, discounts or coupons according to a new Consumers New Media Survey from Cone.
According to Jay Baer; Today, social media is like a soccer league for seven year-olds: everyone gets a trophy.
The day is coming when we'll judge companies not on whether they have a social media program, but on whether that program is relevant, interesting, and financially successful. The day is coming when there are social media winners AND social media losers.
Consumers have learned to "play" brands like an old banjo. Brands offer incentives to get people to "like" them on Facebook and to them it's marketing, to consumers it's give me more promotions or I won't purchase your brand. Brain dead marketers continue to believe that the number of followers on a Facebook page actually means something when most of us know that there is a long way to go from "liking" a brand to actually converting someone who "likes" a brand into a customer.
Marketing is NOT offering consumers a bunch of incentives to purchase your brand. It is understanding what is important to your audience and solving their problems. The minute some marketers stop offering incentives consumers are going to drop them like a bad habit. It's sad that so many marketers don't get it but eventually the numbers will tell a story that the number of followers via social media "doesn't mean a damn thing".
