Go Social or Perish
Why you need social advertising now more than ever.
A brand that doesn’t invest in social advertising is now an anomaly.
74% of the marketers are already ahead of social media advertising because they know it’s the real deal, because marketers know that social will lay the foundation of your brand, carry it forward and if you’re lucky, drive home a sale.
But here’s the big question.
If everyone’s using social, how do we get customers to pay attention?
People are distracted. But they pay attention to social. How do you think watch 3 hour Joe Rogan episodes or binge watch an entire series made to last for weeks in just 12 hours? People just know what they want, they just have short consideration spans. It’s up to us to get them hooked during the first 10 seconds before customers jump to 100x more interesting content. To do this, social is your best bet. Metrics show that there’s no better funnel for that than social media, which can entertain, inform, and engross even the most distracted user.
Ps. Youtube introduced Youtube Shorts for a reason.
Stay close to where you customers are
As the pandemic settles down a bit by bit, most businesses let out a sigh of relief to finally depend less on various tech platforms. But data yells otherwise. Every user’s smartphone screen time report during the pandemic has most likely increased. And 87% of the consumers have agreed that they shop online and will continue to do so even if the pandemic decides to stop anytime soon. For those companies that operate in the retail or FMCG industry the shopping landscape has changed for good.
That’s one thing you can be thankful for in 2021.
If I am to go out of Sri Lankan context and speak about the US, Data estimates from Bloomberg note that U.S. consumers now have roughly $1.5 trillion in savings coming out of the lockdowns of last year — and they’re ready to burn it (for good)
The brands that will reap the biggest rewards in this environment are the ones that master social advertising. With social platforms, brands can re-create the traditional in-store experience online and engage in the type of interactive, persuasive dialogue that helps close the sale.
With social platforms (the very basic, not-so-unknown ones) like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Tiktok had taken over social by a storm. Creating content has a whole new meaning, depending on what your business does. Whether you’re a niche, mass or inbetween, social got you covered. Why? each platform tells stories in a different way. That’s how. You’re the storyteller and social is the storyboard.
Social gets your message across
We have come a long way since the marketing 1.0, where the news feed on facebook was everything. Well, marketing 3.0 is here and everyone wants a piece of it. What’s so special about it? Short video content makes much more noise than anything else (if you do it right)
To be honest, betting on hunches isn’t productive. I’ve been recently experimenting social listening tools like Sprout social which lets you help create content that ultimately helps us marketers to keep track of conversations about brands. In simple terms, this tool lets you champion human to human interaction where you can connect all your social profiles, manage publishing, scheduling, update your keywords and etc.
The route to a sale, nowadays however, is more complex since customer are given a lot of choices and due to the abundance of substitutes your brand might have, but social media allows brands to have meaningful interactions with customers, (again, sprout social has a smart inbox) that lets you set a solid foundation to an uninterrupted customer journey.
Social helps you expand your audience, obviously
Social media is particularly powerful in how it is both hyper local and global at the same time. Organized by interests and niches, social media allows brands to target very specific audiences, and then leverage those audiences globally. The variety of different social media platforms — and targeting tools therein — also allows for further broadening of audience in terms of demographics, and real-time analytics on social ads help brands adjust their offerings accordingly. Though it’s difficult to be a master of all trades, simple analytic tools like Google analytics can help you discover and retain your dream audience.
Social is no longer an afterthought for marketers; it’s now where they build meaningful relationships and connect with their customers. The brands that get social are the ones that will thrive offline too.
This topic is pretty much broad, but thanks to my brand new newsletter list, i’ll be having more ideas. Keep an eye out for more!
