Report: Consumers Unfollow Brands Due To Poor Service, Irrelevant Content, Ads
Half of consumers follow a brand to learn about new products and services, while 48% of consumers follow brands on social to be entertained, according to a new report by Sprout Social.
Conversely, poor customer service is the number one reason why consumers will unfollow a brand on social media (56%), followed by posting irrelevant content (51%) and too many ads from that brand (43%).
More than two-thirds of consumers (67%) will engage with social posts that are entertaining, while only 37% say the same about posts that include discounts or sales. That’s a big shift from the company’s 2018 report, where 67% of consumers said they were most likely to engage with discounts and more than half (51%) said they would share posts promoting sales.
For consumers who choose to engage with brands on social, there’s usually a specific reason for reaching out in the first place. The majority (59%) of consumers say they’ll interact with a brand when they have a great experience with that organization, while 47% reach out when they have questions about a product or service.
And despite what some brands think when it comes to posting about politics or social issues, only one out of ten consumers will reach out to a brand when they choose to get political.
Social success is defined by marketers as “likes” and/or comments (72%), shares/retweets (62%), and personal interactions (60%). Fewer believe revenue (34%), inspiration (32%) and prompting an emotional response (29%) are metrics for success.
Less than half of marketers (47%) say developing social strategies that support overall business goals is their number one challenge, and 53% say proving the value of social to those outside their department remains difficult. And 22% of marketing leaders worry their brand’s social strategy is ineffective.
The report reveals that there is an opportunity for social marketers to become leaders outside of marketing and influence success across their company, says Kristin Johnson, director of content and communications, Sprout Social.
In addition, 71% of social marketers say they are able to provide helpful insights to other departments. “Far too often, though, we are seeing these insights siloed within marketing which creates a barrier and inhibits business-wide growth,” says Johnson.
More than four in 10 of all social marketers (43%) say one major challenge is identifying and understanding their target audience. To address this concern, marketers are turning to social data, with 63% believing social listening will become more important in the coming year.
Live video, user-generated content and Instagram Stories top the trends charts for social in 2019. Forty-five percent of consumers said they want to see live video from brands in 2019, followed by 24% who want more user-generated content and Instagram Stories.
More from the report can be accessed here.
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This article first appeared in www.mediapost.com
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