Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok and the other social platforms provide an opportunity to market our brand and raise the profile of our products. Yet, in our haste to capitalise on this opportunity, we often fail to ask an important question. Is our marketing on social media really achieving the results we want or is it raising aversion to our brand?

Our marketing budgets are often skewed towards advertising and marketing on social media platforms; however, our marketing could have the opposite result of what we want if we are not careful.

How is this possible?

It comes down to the neuroscience of social media.

NEUROSCIENCE AND THE SOCIAL

Neuroscience is a multidisciplinary study of physiology, anatomy, development biology, and other areas to understand the biological basis of individuals' learning, memory, behaviour, and perception. 

One of the findings of neuroscience is because we are social beings, we are fiercely protective of our social spaces [1]. When unexpected marketing or sales intrudes into our social spaces, we often have strong reactions against them.

One of the important findings from the research of Dr Matthew Lieberman in his book Social Why our brains are wired to connect is we have a profound physical need to belong. When this belonging is not met or broken, we can feel pain in the same way we feel physical pain.

Consequently, we will fiercely protect ourselves from the threat or perceived threat to our social connections including the threat of marketing or sales.

SOCIAL Vs TRANSACTIONAL RELATIONSHIPS

Social media is, by its definition, social. It is where people gather in opted-in groups to connect in ways that are unconnected to financial transactions [2]. Because of our need and desire for social connection we are fiercely protective of these connections. When our engagements in our social groups are interrupted by sales and marketing messaging, they are perceived as a threat to this connection and there can be an instinctive reaction against these messages. 

There is another factor that operates in these settings, which is the bias of loss aversion. Marketers may be convinced they are providing a benefit to their potential customers, and therefore the benefit justifies marketing on social media.

However, this justification does not consider people's bias towards loss aversion. Psychologically, we are more predisposed to avoid a loss than to take advantage of a gain or a potential positive [3].

What this means when we are engaged in social settings or on social media, is that we are biased towards protecting the social connection more than we are towards accepting an advantage offered by a product.

The advantage is perceived as a threat to our continued connection, which means we will reject it.  When we are in social mode, we are also wired to achieve and maintain harmony. Brand advertising and engaging with brands over a product is perceived as creating disharmony in a social setting. Again, we will reject the advertising to maintain the harmony of our social connections.