Hot take: is social media worth it?

Hey 👋

Welcome to Neighbourhood Post issue #10 - easy to implement digital marketing ideas straight through your metaphorical letterbox.

It’s 6:59am on Friday. It’s been a busy week. This is the latest I’ve left it to write to you, but I’m committed.

I’m on a train to London, I have 20 minutes to write it. Excuse the typos.

Let’s see how it goes. This one is all about how you make someone feel.

👉 By the way, if you’ve missed previous newsletters you’ll find them here.

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Calculation the ROI of Social Media

Marketing is all about return on investment.

You don’t want to sink £10,000 into marketing without knowing what you’ll get back.

And in a world where we can track so much data, it’s a lot easier to see which marketing activity is resulting in the most conversions.

However, when that comes to social media, it’s actually a hindrance.

You see, tracking sales, action and ROI on social media is misleading in two ways:

1) Social media companies literally build algorithms that discourage your audience to visit your website and take action

2) Your audience aren’t really in a buying mindset when they’re scrolling social media.

I saw a brilliant reel this week that sums up what we’ve been helping clients with for a little while.

> Take 60 seconds of your time to watch it here

The gist is:

People don’t want to see product photos on social media.

It’s not about how much you can sell, it’s about how you make people feel.

She gives the example of Red Bull. They could share a photo of a can of Red Bull, every day, but that’s not very engaging. Their engagement would drop, the algorithm would notice and their posts would get less visibility.

Instead they choose to make their audience feel something.

High energy, high adrenaline, extreme sports, living on the edge.

The goal is that when someone walks past a can in the shop, their brain focuses on the same rush of excitement and intrigue as when they view Red Bull’s social content.

That actually means social media becomes more like TV advertising, which scares marketing people and CEOs.

It’s less about tracking conversions and more about brand positioning.

So how do you make your audience feel? What is the lasting impression you want them to have about your brand?

Side note: It’s an interesting one for charities, and we spend a lot of time thinking about how they can get the most out of social media. They don’t have a “product” per se, but they do still have the opportunity to make their audience feel something; hope, community, togetherness, agency etc. Maybe more on that another time.

Moving away from a rigid ROI perspective of social media is one of the hardest marketing mind shifts.

In a world of data and tracking it doesn’t feel right.

But if you don’t, and you’re always focused on how many conversions and sales come from social you’re constantly battling against the tidal wave of unfriendly algorithms and audience indifference.

22 minutes. How did I do?

I promise I’ll leave more time in the future.

See you next week

✌️

What we’re looking at 👀 and listening to 👂

📺 Just one this week, for a special edition - make sure you watch the reel I’ve linked above. It will probably explain my point better than I have!

Before you go - we’ll never use these newsletters to directly sell you our services, but we’re always here if you need any expertise or support 👍