On April 8, Lush Cosmetics UK announced that it will no longer use social media in the UK as a part of their marketing program. The news came as a surprise. The bigger surprise to though: it was met with quite a bit of applause from customers and marketers alike.
In the Instagram post, where Lush made the announcement, the company said that “Increasingly, social media is making it harder and harder for us to talk to each other directly. We are tired of fighting with algorithms, and we do not want to pay to appear in your newsfeed.”
More About Passions And Less About Likes
The brand made it clear that the decision was made to re-align with their core values of creating a community of changemakers in the cosmetic industry. And the shift means that they can “be more about passions and less about likes.”
This wish for more connection and less social media noise is something I have encountered with my Communications Rebel clients. Many express concern about an increasingly difficult task to maneuver the daily social media challenges in 2019. As a result of a saturated landscape driven by increasingly complex algorithms, brands are forced to rely on paid promotion to appear in people’s newsfeed.
But as promotional posts have become more ubiquitous, users have become more sensitive to ads in their newsfeed. The result: more people ignore paid ads in their social feeds, which in turn forces brands to increase their ad budget and deliver even more ads.
No wonder Lush Cosmetics has cut the social media cord in the UK.
Want to know three questions you can ask yourself about social media marketing in 2019? Read on…
Three Questions to Ask Yourself About Social Media Marketing
In my video I share three questions that I recommend you ask yourself about your social media marketing. These are questions that apply to individuals or organizations. Any brand that is active on social media in 2019 should be reflecting on their marketing program.
These three questions are a good starting point to gain more insights into their own motivation and remember why they adopted a social media marketing program in the first place.
1. What do I hope to accomplish?
2. How does the use of social media in my marketing strategy make me money?
3. Does social media allow me to extend or expand something I’m currently doing? In other words – if I were to quit social media marketing, would I lose a critical part of my outreach strategy that can’t be replaced?
