Don’t follow Lush, get off your ‘organic’ high horse, and start selling on social
As yet another brand gives up on its social media accounts, King Kong’s Sabri Suby argues a shift in mindset is required to truly win at social.
When Lush UK announced it was quitting its social media accounts last week, claiming it was “tired of fighting with algorithms” and didn’t want to “pay to appear” in feeds, the response from the marketing industry was mixed.
Bizarre. Social media is the best customer service tool and you have direct access to your customers. Also what about the people on Twitter over 200k followers are they not important? Do you RT others eg your customers…do you ask how they are/ post pics of behind the scenes
— Samantha Kelly (@Tweetinggoddess) April 8, 2019
IMHO This doesn’t make sense.
If a business/brand wants to open up the conversation with their customers why would they move away from where their customers are (Social) and focus more on call centres and email support, which is disruptive and less convenient for customers? pic.twitter.com/ymIea01rzK
— Lloyd Knowlton ?? (@lloydy37) April 9, 2019
The news comes almost exactly a year after UK pub chain JD Wetherspoon similarly pulled its accounts, with founder and chairman Tim Martin telling the BBC: “I don’t believe that closing
these accounts will affect our business whatsoever.”
Aussie marketing expert Mark Ritson described the move as “brand leadership at its best.”
While these individual stories undoubtedly attract attention and column inches, the ‘social is dead’ line is almost always overhyped. Taking the dramatic step to give up on your social media accounts is a result of a misplaced distrust of social, primarily influenced by an oversaturation of bad content.
With a strong brand story, 572,000 Instagram followers, 423,000 on Facebook and 202,000 on Twitter, there is no reason Lush shouldn’t be a social media powerhouse.
The truth is, social hasn’t really changed that much at all. While its algorithms might get a fine tuning every now and then, the basic mechanisms remain the same.
What has changed, however, is users’ savviness. As a result, marketers must get a lot smarter to match these increasing expectations. As feeds reach saturation point, average content will no
longer fly. People know their own value as a customer, so unless you are providing them at least that same value in return, they will simply scroll on past.
When brands blame algorithms and decreased organic reach on their social media fails, what’s really happening is a failure to understand how people think. If you can fully understand a potential customer’s psyche and drill down into what drives them, it’s still possible to create incredible ROI through social.
The difference is, you need to put your money where your mouth is. You must know where your customer is on their journey to convert, which simply isn’t practical without a paid sales funnel.
This is more than simply ‘paying to appear’ in news feeds. If you don’t have a solid funnel in place before you put money behind social, you might as well chuck your ad dollars straight down the drain. There’s no point throwing good money after bad ads.
“But I have anecdotal evidence of someone who succeeded without spending a dollar!” I hear you cry.
Think about it: if your content or offer is compelling enough to be successful without spending money, imagine how much more you could make by paying to put it in front of more people.
It’s actually disgustingly simple to make money hand-over-fist on social media. Your advert sells a click to your irresistible offer, your offer proves value to the customer. Then, when the iron is
hot, you serve up perfectly-crafted, attention grabbing adverts. The simple fact is, if you prove your value to your customers, your trust in them will be rewarded.
So unless you want to end up amongst the disgruntled craftsmen blaming their tools, it’s time to change tack and start serving up unmissable, high-value content for your customers. Because they’re not going to wait around for you to figure it out.
Alternatively, if you hate bringing in new customers by the truckload and making more sales than ever, feel free to ride your ‘organic’ high horse to death while you watch your competition drive past in Ferraris.
Sabri Suby is the founder of digital marketing agency King Kong
Guy who makes money flogging social marketing says social marketing is a good thing.
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They obviously don’t listen to GaryVee…
Sabri does, it seems, given statements like “It’s actually disgustingly simple to make money hand-over-fist on social media.”
Sharing a formula straight out of his playbook, which may work for many, sure. And easy to productise for an agency to sell.
The Shamwow is great too. It holds multiple times its weight in water and is so good that it just about sells itself.
Diving deeper below the superficial are the proper, strategic reasons that have informed Lush’s management team.
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