I recently went to a music festival, and as someone notoriously terrible at stepping out of my music comfort zone, I was delighted to discover a new band that I immediately wanted to hear more from. And so, I did what every Gen-Z does and followed their social media right away. I wanted to stay up to date with new album drops, more live shows, and mainly just remind myself to actually listen to this new music.

Suddenly my feed is overrun with reels from the band: From “We saw a girl ask 20,000 people for £1 so she could buy a new car, we’re only asking that you share this post.” To “Crazy that people will watch a 10-minute influencer video, but won’t take 2 seconds to watch this video.”

And this wasn’t a one-off. 1-2 videos every single day, of the same 4 pity prompts on repeat.

This is Pity Marketing.

What is pity marketing?

As always, the trend began on TikTok, but it’s crept into every corner of the internet.

Content creators and small businesses will post a video and place a text prompt over it that’s meant to pull on our heartstrings.

Every post is meant to provoke an empathetic response that drives your next action. This could be making a purchase to save their small business, sharing a link because their socials aren’t growing, leaving a good review to counteract a bad one, or simply watching a video to completion so that TikTok or Instagram will pay more into their creator funds.

The issue is it works.

Empathy is very easy to tap into and not often provoked in marketing. You’re likely desensitised to a lot of marketing tricks, like the urgency of a sale or a BOGOF that barely cuts the price, but your immunity isn’t built up to empathy yet. You want to be a good person. You want to help.

That’s what they’re hoping for.

Pity Scammers

You’re on TikTok, and you’ve just been prompted to pause your scrolling and watch a minute-long video of a disabled veteran selling handmade goods from his garage. His injury stopped him from reintegrating into the workforce, and he and his wife just get by on what he sells. He’s dependent on the kindness and patriotism of strangers.

So, you order a hand-carved wooden flag. It sets you back £150.

But what shows up looks nothing like the video. A block of plywood with a printed photo of a flag messily glued on top. It’s not handmade, and certainly not worth the money you’ve spent.

You’ve been scammed.

This isn’t a hypothetical. This happened to veteran, Raymond Gilbert. As a veteran himself, he was hit emotionally by the video, prompting him to make his purchase, but it wasn’t completely impulsive. He checked the product photos, previous sales count and reviews before spending any money. Because of the nature of these sales, it can be difficult to receive a refund if the product doesn’t arrive as advertised.

From the BBC investigation, 45 other accounts with similar videos and “Products” were found and removed by TikTok. There’s no way of knowing if this was multiple scammers with the same hook, or all run by the same person.

In researching for this blog, it was incredibly easy to find many more accounts continuing the scam. The issue isn’t solved, it’s too easy to create another account.

Videos are easy to steal. Even easier to create with AI. Not many people are stopping to research a business in situations like these. Why would they check for a website when the “Buy now” button is right there on TikTok Shop? How could you question the validity of the video when they need the money so desperately?

This isn’t to say that every pity marketing video you see is a scam, but are you sure you can tell the difference? Do you want to spend 10 minutes researching before you watch every video?

Why is pity marketing a bad idea?

Back to the band.

I know they aren’t scammers, but my view of them has been tainted.

As a consumer, you’d visit social media to learn more about a company, their product, and why they’re passionate about their industry.

Pity marketing doesn’t answer any of those questions.

People don’t want to be manipulated into liking or commenting; they want to learn more about you.

If you’re trying to expand your reach on social media, and this is your approach, you could be turning willing customers away.

While Pity marketing may work in the short term to get eyes on your business quickly, that momentum won’t hold. People might copy a link because they’ve been begged to, but they’ve not learned anything about you, about what you do, your values, who you’re here to help, why you chose your sector, etc.

No one’s going to actively follow your account to see more pity marketing. After the second or third plea, people switch off. They become desensitised to you.

And when someone is genuinely interested in your company, what are they learning from a deep dive on your account?

That your business is struggling.

And why would they want to invest in that?

It’s very tempting to see videos shoot up in engagement, but chasing vanity metrics leads to an unengaged audience and a quick drop in the stats you were searching for.

So, what can you do instead?

Connecting with your audience authentically is integral to gaining new customers. You need to understand what your target audience wants to see and what they will engage with.

This is where content pillars come in.

Content pillars are the key themes your business regularly creates content around. They help keep your messaging consistent, make planning easier and ensure you’re sharing a mix of content that informs, engages and builds trust with your audience.

For example, your content pillars might include educational tips, behind-the-scenes content, customer success stories, industry insights and promotional posts. The right pillars will depend on your business, your audience and what you want to achieve through your marketing.

Rather than beg for likes, create content that speaks to your audience’s needs, interests and challenges. Answer their questions, share useful advice, show the people behind your business and demonstrate how you can help solve their problems.

Forget vanity metrics. An engaged audience, excited about you and your product, is so much more valuable than mindless shares that lead nowhere.

Check out our downloadable guide to learn more about increasing your follower count the right way.

At BuzzGen, we help businesses develop content strategies to help you find your audience. From identifying the right content pillars to creating engaging social media posts, we can help you build a consistent online presence that connects with the right people.

Not sure what you should be posting or how to turn your ideas into a strategy? Get in touch with BuzzGen and let’s create content that works harder for your business.