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Twitter and Teachable Marketing Moments

Posted by SMstudy® on June 01, 2016 | Digital Marketing (DM)

Keywords: twitter, social media insights, conflict diamonds, Brilliant Earth

Twitter and Teachable Marketing Moments

The Twittersphere can be a harsh place—especially for those unaccustomed to the brevity and direct discourse that the 140-character limit demands. And it can smart for those who simply haven’t grown the thick skin required for survival when tweets are as sharp as a Masamune sword and often equally well crafted. And if individual users are susceptible, so too are businesses promoting their wares via tweets; no one is beyond reach. Promoted tweets (ads) are not a new thing and twitter users are familiar enough with them to gloss over their annoying presence, unless something jumps out and simply can’t be ignored. This was the case over the weekend for the company Brilliant Earth, which sells “beyond conflict free” diamonds both online and at three locations in the U.S.

Here’s the offending tweet…

The reaction was swift. Here’s a sampling of the responses…

Probably not the response Brilliant Earth was hoping for, nor the one most likely intended, which would have been a click and a fall right into their sales funnel. Nevertheless, there it is. This message didn’t work …at least not on Twitter. From the replies, it appears to have been offensive to those who dislike millennials, those who disapprove of diamonds in general (more on that in a moment)  and those who dislike the marketing effort specifically.

And of course, there are other factors besides the questionable marketing that could be at work. First, consider the medium, a place where breaking news and snarky commentary mingle in a live stew of people’s ideas and opinions; and the demographic—a young, college-educated, urban crowd, according to a 2014 Pew Research Social Media Update.

Here’s their findings..

These demographic details may be at play in the Brilliant Earth tweet that did not pass muster, since the right audience is essential for any marketing effort. As Digital Marketing, book three of the SMstudy® Guide points out “businesses that are successful in social media have a large group of followers that become loyal to the company’s products or services, actively engage with the brand, and also share the brand’s content with their own social network, thus creating a much larger reach for the business.”

But in this case, the main issue appears to be that the company, a diamond merchant, is facing a specific backlash from those educated and worldly enough to know that “conflict diamonds” or “blood diamonds” notoriously sourced using inhumane, exploitative practices are still relatively ubiquitous, regardless of what the vendor claims, and that the provenance of any given diamond will always be murky and easily falsifiable. As the New York Times noted “there’s no independent oversight of the industry’s monitoring and that conflict diamonds still make their way to the marketplace.”

So, it is possible that the controversy around the subject of ethically sourced diamonds in particular is a hot button issue for some twitter users and Brilliant Earth pushed it, resulting in an unfortunate teachable moment. But with all that being said, Twitter is one of the best places to test the waters with marketing messages.

 As we stated in a previous post:

 Focus groups may be passé, but testing is still very much a part of the marketing strategy. From a product standpoint, social media insights can reflect the strengths and weaknesses of a product’s lifecycle as well as the effectiveness of current marketing efforts. Filling the role of the modern-day focus group, social media insights are also valuable for taking the temperature of the public on an idea such as a logo or slogan, a product or service. Testing the social media world’s tastes and perceptions allows for adjustment before launching, saving money and perhaps even preventing a catastrophic mistake. 

Would it be fair to assume the Brilliant Earth marketing team is debriefing the social response to this message? Heck, yes! For marketers, insights such as the ones provided above are the true capital social media provides—the most comprehensive picture of consumer behavior, sentiment and decision-making process they’ve ever been blessed to lay hands on. As John Donnelly III, SVP of global sales and marketing at Crimson Hexagon points out, “One of the most effective ways to glean consumer insights is by analyzing social media conversation… sales teams are realizing that social media is rife with information about what their prospects care about, how they consume media and what motivates their decision-making.”

So, before large amounts of marketing dollars are invested in costlier forms of advertising, Twitter, Facebook, and so on can be the best testing ground for a company’s marketing experiments. This becomes even more important when a company is in the line of fire for controversial practices or products and must tread lightly through the minefield of social sentiment.

For more articles on sales and marketing, visit smstudy.com.

Sources:

Social Media Update 2014, Pew Research Center, http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/09/social-media-update-2014/

Diamonds are for Never?, The New York Times, Mireya Navarro, Dec. 14, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/fashion/14diamonds.html?_r=1

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