Why marketers need to wean themselves off social engagement metrics

The simple truth is, content doesn’t need to be persuasive to elicit engagement online, or vice versa. Whilst there is often correlation, causation is far from guaranteed. Cold turkey continues by checking in to the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute to meet with Prof. Byron Sharp. As Sharp’s ‘How Brands Grow: What marketers don’t know’ is a book many marketing practitioners are familiar with I’ll just call out one of the most important rules touted: that you need to “continuously reach all buyers of the category and avoid being silent” to achieve brand growth.

News 8 years ago Unknown author

I’ve been doing this a little while now and I’ve seen it time and time again.

The insatiable appetite for meaningless reports and dashboards.

The constant chasing of love hearts over dollars.

The thumb-twitching angst whilst watching the likes roll in. One. By. One.

All tell-tale signs, folks. The diagnosis is clear. The marketing industry has an addiction problem.

The allure of sweet, clicky and most importantly immediate ‘success’ metrics of reactions, retweets and comments is muddying our perception of ROI. And we’re hooked.

It’s no surprise really, our poor little lizard brains are wired to chase popularity and fame, both so easily and immediately measured in the currency of likes, shares and laughing smiley faces.

As marketers this has made it too easy to hide. Engagement myopia has set in and we’re quick to blame the external market factors rather than question our work when things go wrong.

But it has to stop.

Fortunately rehab is free, data driven and about a four minute read.

The first stop on the road to Damascus? Menlo Park, where Facebook has confirmed that the delicious, addictive goodness of likes and shares can only ever be a proxy for interest, “not reliable indicators of persuasiveness”.

Moreover, “more than 90% of offline sales come from people who don’t interact with the ads during the campaign” (Facebook & Datalogix, 2012).

The simple truth is, content doesn’t need to be persuasive to elicit engagement online, or vice versa. Whilst there is often correlation, causation is far from guaranteed.

Cold turkey continues by checking in to the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute to meet with Prof. Byron Sharp.

As Sharp’s ‘How Brands Grow: What marketers don’t know’ is a book many marketing practitioners are familiar with I’ll just call out one of the most important rules touted: that you need to “continuously reach all buyers of the category and avoid being silent” to achieve brand growth.