Our 19th annual research project explores the role of social media marketing in driving brand and business growth. Last week in our first post we explored the importance of connecting with your core target and integrating social media with other channels, including traditional media. In this week’s post we look at the challenge of engaging your consumer AND selling more stuff.
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1. SHOW them THE MONEY
Perhaps the most worrying finding in our research concerns why companies invest in social media in the first place. A shocking 32% admit that keeping up with marketing trends and “what’s hot” is the main driver. Another 26% rely mainly on gut feel. Only 42% say they have evidence that social media drives business results.
Social media metrics such as followers, likes and engagement can be useful diagnostics, but they are not the end goal. Marketing ultimately needs to contribute to profitable growth. Social media marketing planning should, therefore, start with a clear growth objective rather than with a platform or content idea. Is the job to recruit new users? Increase frequency? Strengthen a specific brand association? Drive trial of a new product? Generate direct sales?
2. BE DISTINCTIVELY BRANDED …
One marketing director interviewed for our study summed up the challenge nicely: “We need to bake the brand into content so that it’s not simply sponsored entertainment.” Research from System1 backs this up. Social content with exceptional early branding delivers 88% higher memory lift, 92% higher brand awareness lift and 85% higher brand image lift than work with weak early branding.
Here, there is a key role for distinctive brand assets — colours, logos, typography, product shapes, characters and other recognisable codes. These help create mental availability and increase the chance that attention translates into memory for your brand.
Household cleaning brand The Pink Stuff illustrates the power of this approach. Social media has played an important role in helping annual sales grow 400% since 2018 to around $125 million. Crucially, the social content consistently amplifies the brand’s distinctive assets: the memorable name, bright pink colour and humorous tone.
3. … AND ENTERTAIN
Branding alone is not enough. Social content also needs to earn attention. System1 calls this “Showmanship”, and its research suggests highly entertaining content can generate significant increases across key measures: roughly 2x the memory lift, 2.8x the brand awareness lift and 50% higher conversion lift versus the least entertaining content. Here, there is plenty of room for improvement. Almost half of UK consumers (47%) say they are concerned about the repetitive nature of influencer marketing.
Vaseline’s Verified campaign shows how to combine brand and entertainment effectively. The brand tapped into consumer-generated Vaseline “hacks”, tested the most interesting ideas with its R&D team and then amplified the successful ones through social media. The creators retained freedom to entertain in their own way, while Vaseline’s logo and distinctive blue remained highly visible. The combination delivered more than social engagement: sales increased 43%.
In conclusion, the key social media marketing challenge today is use distinctive brand assets to ensure social content is branded, at the same time as working with creative agencies who can produce content that also delivers entertainment value.
