Negosentro| 63% Of People Are More Likely To Buy From A Brand That Speaks Out About Politics |When it comes to brands and politics, there are two sides to this heavily debated issue. In one corner, you have those that believe brands should never get political, that the two should be separated like church and state.
In the other corner, you have those that believe brands should always speak out and use their platform to take a stand and confirm their place in history. It’s a complicated issue. And with a global pandemic and Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, it seems like there’s unprecedented pressure on brands to speak out.
But will speaking out about politics harm or help your business? A new study by Adzooma set out to find the answer, surveying 378 people about what they think of brands and politics, how it impacted their purchasing decisions and opinions of the brands in question.
The data revealed an overall positive message about politics, with 63% of people being more likely to buy from a brand that speaks out. This data aligns with more socially conscious buyers, who chose to buy from brands that align with their own views and values.
Renata Castro of Castro Legal Group, states that “shopping habits can steadily and surely push powerful businesses to be more responsible about their political stances, it is not an inconvenience to be mindful of where you spend your mind, but a duty”.
In addition, choosing to spend with a company that supports these causes also increases the feel-good factor from a customer when they buy, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty. It’s the same factor that Amazon uses with their Amazon Smile website, which automatically donates 0.05% of the purchase price to the user’s chosen charity.
However, it’s not all good news when posting about politics. Customers will only buy more if they agree with the stance your brand has taken. If they disagree, 67.5% of people will be unlikely to buy from your company. If you’re going to post about politics, you need to make sure it’s not something the majority of your customer base disagrees with.
In addition, the data has shown there’s a lack of trust involved with political statements. 43.5% of users believe they are a way for brands to jump on the bandwagon, while 23% of people see them as purely promotional tools. Only 11.4% of people saw them as genuine responses, which is an incredibly low amount of people.
What this shows is that if you’re going to be posting about politics, you need to think carefully about the messaging. It’s not enough to just issue a blank statement or change your icon to a rainbow flag for a few days.
Political sincerity is where you start to earn customer loyalty and increase your sales with those that agree with you.
Overall, it seems as though posting about politics might not win you any popularity contests with 42.3% of people likely to unfollow brands that speak out. But, it can earn you new customers and sales, if your viewpoint aligns with that of your customers. It’s proven one thing that businesses have already known: it’s all about your customers.
The full data of the Adzooma study can be found here.
The full infographic can be found here:
Data was gathered from 378 anonymous respondents via surveyswap.io. No participant was paid for their response, and the survey was made available to people of all backgrounds, ages, genders and ethnicities to avoid any bias in responses.
