Global Market Research Company Forrester Suggests Twitter Advertisers Invest Elsewhere

Twitter has seen its fair share of sunshine but now it is time for some cloudy days. Ever since Musk acquired the platform, the popularity ratio of the platform has gone down a few notches.

Users now trust the platform less, use it less, and the overall user experience is comparatively lower. This has led to the market being cautious about whether to use the platform as a marketing outlet or not.

Forrester, a global market research company, recently published a report where they advised marketers to be careful of the platform. Since only 22% of adult users use Twitter now, it isn’t the best site for companies to invest in marketing strategies.

Where Forrester did applaud Twitter for its high cultural relevance, it made sure to mention how poorly the platform was doing in terms of advertisement. It also acknowledged that no other platform can replace Twitter for it holds a special place in the social media community.

An analyst from the company, Kelsey Chickering stated that Twitter had never been on the priority list when it comes to marketing. The global budget spent on marketing on Twitter is only 1.3%. She also went ahead to claim how marketers have been giving Twitter more leverage than it deserves ever since Elon Musk took over.

Twitter has never been a low-funnel platform. It cannot be used to directly target customers. It is more of a high-funnel place where awareness is spread. That is what the platform was meant to do hence expecting it to deliver low-funnel marketing like targeting and personalization is not exactly fair.

The company then specified which platforms are best for which kind of marketing. All the Meta applications are best for customer lifecycle marketing. They’re perfect for low-funnel strategies and have proven performance.

Next on the list were 3 platforms that are more campaign dependent. These include Pinterest, Snapchat, and LinkedIn. Pinterest is good for promoting a product indirectly. Since it is new to the commerce and video side, marketers have to be clever with their campaigns. Snapchat is great for providing creative resources while LinkedIn is the perfect place to target consumers in their business minds.

Lastly, there was a list of test and learn platforms. These included Reddit, TikTok, and Twitter. Each of these has its perks but they’re not good enough to be in the lead yet. Reddit is a rising platform and will soon be one of the best places to market. TikTok is only good for making money when users collaborate with paid partners. Twitter is not the place to market but a great place to spread awareness and has amazing safety policies.

Forrester then went ahead with a few questions for marketers. These included if the product would be in safe hands if they were to shift from Twitter, considering Twitter’s remarkable safety policies. Another one was to what degree is the budget already allocated to Twitter, and if it wasn’t being spent there, is it being spent at a better place? Another one that caught our eye was what impact has Twitter had on the product’s success.

These are some of the questions that marketers should ask themselves before evaluating their relationship with Twitter. It will also help them decide whether they want to join, stay, or leave the platform.

A lot of people believe that Twitter is becoming a rather unsafe place since it has become a space for racism, capitalism, and false rumors. This is why most big brands have already left Twitter. However, some have chosen to turn a blind eye to this, like Amazon which still pays big bucks for their marketing to Twitter.

As a safe way to play with Twitter, Foresters suggested a few tips. The first is to refrain from posting any brand content on the site. The next is to monitor and respond to customer requests and concerns to keep up the brand quality. Another one is to listen to cultural trends or feedback since Twitter is the most culturally relevant platform. The last is to test other social media platforms to see if they yield better results than Twitter.

Of course, this advice is only for those marketers that find Twitter risky. We were surprised to find out that a lot of users find Twitter to be a dangerous place with a lot of concerns. These include the platform being too hateful, the presence of fake bots, the content on the platform being too political, and widespread misinformation.

Another set of concerns includes the platform’s moderation being too strict, being a mentally draining place, and the opposition to the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk.

There are plenty of reasons why users and marketers are now avoiding Twitter. While it is true that the place has become a mess after Elon Musk took over, it remains the number one place to look for news and find a culturally relevant space.


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