Engagement Statistics That Suck In Even The Savviest Of Marketers
March 22nd, 2010 by Rory Partalis
Categories: Social Media, Trend Spotting | Tags: advertisers, advertising, Analytics, behavior, competition, email, engagement, facebook, farmville, feedback loop, foursquare, google, google reader, mafia wars, marketers, marketing, netflix, OCD, online, rss, Statistics, stats, twitter, video games, warcraft, web design, WoW
Whether you realize it or not, I’m sure you’ve fallen victim to one of the most effective marketing tricks in the book – sucking people in by providing them with engagement statistics. It’s a tough concept to wrap your head around initially, but once you understand it, you notice it everywhere – the endless feedback loop of engagement statistics.
The draw of this is most apparent in video game addicts. Do you know someone who is obsessed with improving their XBOX Gamer Score or getting enough XP to level up their character in WoW (that’s World of Warcraft for you n00bs)? Do you know a Facebook addict that is consumed with seemingly mindless apps like Farmville or Mafia Wars? Why do they care so much about something that has little to no effect on their real life? Because their stats are constantly shared with themselves and their peers and it becomes a status symbol or competition of sorts. It also taps into the OCD in us all – a desire to make progress and accomplish things.
However, this isn’t just limited to gamers. Take marketers, like myself. Too much of my time is consumed with checking email because I hate to have things on my to do list or unread email messages. I also spend a lot of time on Google Reader making sure to keep up with my RSS feeds and to make sure I continue to share and read shared items with my peers. Actually, when I think about it, much of my online life is trying to suck me in even further with engagement stats and feedback loops: Twitter followers, RTs, DMs, @ replies and lists; Facebook friends; Netflix Queue lists and rated movie counts; and Foursquare check-ins…
There is a debate to be had about whether this is a healthy trend or not, but I’m not going there because I feel like there is no turning back now. People, like myself, enjoy being able to see statistics on our own behavior and being able to compare that behavior with friends’. However, I do recommend moderation and reflection on our behavior. Most people reading this blog consider themselves savvy marketers or advertisers, so we should be able to spot these techniques designed to encourage re-engagement. Feel free to get sucked into these binges of OCD behavior from time to time, but know when to say “enough is enough.”
On the other hand, from a marketer’s perspective, giving people access to statistics is a valuable tool to encourage re-engagement. Use it wisely.
Rory…
I hear exactly what you are saying. I do believe keeping score is effective. If you don’t measure – what’s the point?
I also believe we can get caught up in taking this statistical data to the point of overlooking the important things we need to be doing…like servicing customers and developing new business – which is why there are the two metrics I measure most often.
Thanks for the post – very interesting.
What a breath of fresh air to bring a little sunshine after a stressful day. Great article that really gets the thought across. Thank you for sharing.
I just discovered your site on Yahoo. Fantastic article. Thanks for taking the time to share this.
The moment I found your site was like wow. Thank you for putting your effort in writing this blog.
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I'm really interested in things like this, Please make more on this topic.
Farmville is one of the reasons I switched to Facebook lite, I got annoyed by my buddies activity feeds getting filled by Farmville messages, and I'm considering about abandoning Facebook altogether, all these apps are a pain in the butt, I wish there was an option to blocked messages from certain games (and if there is I'd like to learn where I can change it).
I loved this post. The ironic thing is that while consumers’ attention spans are decreasing, the amount of items competing for their attention – email, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, RSS feeds, Foursquare – is increasing. I think we're already at a point where our our attention spans are maxed out!