Two questions for all you marketers out there:
1️⃣ What % of marketers do you think use social media?
2️⃣ What % of ‘normal’ people do you think use social media?
Take note of your answers before reading on.
ThinkTV Australia asked similar questions as part of a survey they conducted in 2017.
They asked adland professionals which social media they had used in the last seven days.
Then they asked those professionals to estimate social media usage for real Australians.
Here are the results for Twitter and Instagram:
TWITTER:
46% of marketers had used Twitter themselves.
And estimated 53% of normal people had.
INSTAGRAM:
79% of marketers had used Instagram.
And estimated 89% of normal people had.
So, marketers estimated normal people used social media about as often as they did.
Nothing to see here you might think.
But the thing is…
The survey also asked normal people about their ACTUAL social media usage.
And the results couldn’t be more startling.
Only 13% of normal Australians had used Twitter.
And only 33% had used Instagram.
Which means…
Marketers overestimated Twitter usage by 308% and Instagram usage by 170%.
As ThinkTV put it:
“It turns out that many advertising, marketing and media professionals are uninformed about the media consumption habits and attitudes of ‘normal’ Australians as adlanders significantly overestimate people’s use of online platforms.”
It’s an easy mistake to make.
And one almost everyone in marketing has probably made at some point.
Myself included.
For me, the takeaway here is this:
Don’t assume customers are like you.
They’re not.
Instead, assume you have no more in common with them than being Homo sapien.
That’ll keep you market oriented.
Which is a much better starting point.
For everyone.
***
Now, be honest.
At the beginning of this post, were your two estimates of social media usage similar?