From familiar and social connections to merchandise, the tone of using social media has changed over the years. More than 5 billion users have a presence on social media channels and spend an average session of 4 – 6 hours. Most intents of search in this decade were about exploring the bucket of products and services across different categories and letting them be a part of daily life.
Do you know? 71% of the users realize new products from various social media channels. 49% of those get to know about it from Instagram shorts.
With the change in customer behavior and perception of social media usage, these platforms are converting their service pattern according to emerging trends, to give a limitless scope to social marketers to use these channels beyond traditional branding methods.
Every individual business needs to be aware of the latest trends in social media and follow them to highlight its brand online. Realizing the evolving changes in the social media dimension will give you a hands-on advantage while designing strategies to promote your brand in 2023.
Before learning the dynamic trends, let's cover a glimpse of the social media marketing stream and realize its essence in the digital marketing world.
What is Social Media Marketing?
In simple words, Social Media Marketing relates to using social media channels for marketing purposes where brands promote their products and services. The key intent of this digital marketing service is to attract customer attention and tempt them to purchase their products online. It also includes welcome words for customers to explore more inventories from the brand's website.
The turn in customers' interest and way of interacting with social channels brings changes in the marketing approach, which gives birth to innovative trends that businesses must watch and focus on building solid and attractive strategies to reach their target customers.
In this article, we will run you through the latest social media marketing trends that your business must follow for customer acquisition and sales.
7 Social Media Marketing Trends to follow in 2023
1. User-generated contents speak a lot!
User-generated content (UGC) is original, brand-specific content created by unpaid and unbiased users’ opinions over a particular product or service.
It comes in many forms including photos, videos, blog or discussion forum posts, poll responses, etc.
While purchasing, customers believe the words of UGC creators are 9.8 times more helpful than any other influencer content. As the opinions are genuine and original, customers believe the content and use it as a reference while purchasing the products or services.
Do you know? 79% of the purchasing decisions come from the evaluation of UGC.
Do you think it is the same as influencer marketing? Perfectly not. It is because influencers have expert knowledge of the products they market and share their impressions based on them. Influencers get payables to speak on behalf of the brands and promote the products within their follower base. It looks significantly different from user-generated content. Users don't need any product knowledge. They reveal the experience they get from products or services after using them.
2. Video shorts attract more customers than the detailed-one
Consumers nowadays love to explore ‘N’ number of short videos related to products, services, etc. Brands are taking giant steps ahead in creating astonishing videos of their products to engage, sell and meet the raising demand of their customers.
With time human attention span is growing shorter which is why it is very important brands begin their content with a bang and hold their audience till the last sec of the video.
Did you know? Brands received a boost of over 30% in their ROI when they used short videos as part of social media marketing strategies.
Want to know the reason why it happened? Well, users change their minds frequently within seconds while scrolling through the shorts, and they stop to watch the shorts that are relevant to them and informative and develop a kind of curiosity inside them that drives them to explore more information from the channel. As users search for quick answers, shorts give instant and to-the-point solutions to their queries.
Some shorts represent detailed videos by highlighting the crux of the content in shorthand.
3. Immersive experience through AR & VR
Social media is now growing with AR (Augmented Reality) and VR (Virtual Reality) technologies, which allow users to gain a real-time experience of the products or services without getting in touching them. It gives a sense to users who can virtually realize the use of products or services, luring them into making decisions on purchasing those products.
For a better understanding of AR technology, let's take an example of a color & decor company that uses this technology to opt for the color for the interior portion of your house.
When you go through the company's app and scan the interior walls, you get a canvas with colorless images of the walls with vibrant color options on board.
You need to click on the color palettes on the screen to realize how the interior will look when you physically start painting them. It adds a virtual experience about the product even though you have not used them yet, which will help you make decisions to choose the best color scheme for designing the interior section.
On the other hand, VR is an animation technique that gives an immersive experience in a 3D environment with fictional interaction with the products in 360 degrees.
4. Pushing Ads in the Gaming Apps
Gaming platforms are now registering themselves in social media marketing strategies. During the Covid19 pandemic, when there was a restriction on outdoor activities, demographically, people of all age groups started to lean towards digital gaming platforms through mobile devices to spend their time staying back home. The trend was so engaging that the gaming industry observed a surge in the user base in 2022 than earlier.
Do you know? In 2022, the gamer population was around 3.1 billion, while experts estimate the count will rise to 3.3 billion in 2024.
Studies from Allied Market Research say that the in-game ads market will witness a revenue rise from $6.8 billion in 2021 to $17.6 billion in 2030. The trends of in-game ads give a better opportunity to businesses to place advertisements before prospects and attract them to their brands.
In-game ads help you get data about your target customers, learn their interests and prepare effective marketing strategies to grab their attention.
5. Social E-Commerce
With a whopping 5 billion users rolling on the social media panels, 98% of them spend their time on shopping purposes, which shows how social commerce is emerging as a powerful channel in the market.
Keeping personal connections and chatting aside, social platforms like Facebook and Instagram now give a separate space for businesses to build and promote their brand profile online. They facilitate various analytical tools to understand customer behavior, and brands gather those analyzed data to bring intuitive solutions for their target customers.
Accuracy in preparing strategies depending upon the analyzed data brings synergy in the interaction between the users and the brand, helping increase the businesses' conversion rate. If you are not an expert in it, take help from an internet marketing agency to work on your behalf.
Personalization of advertisements and retargeting them to the relevant & potential customers according to their product interests helps your customers to learn about your product, explore them and make purchasing decisions when convinced.
6. Reaching Customers through Support Services
Did you know? Around 99% of social media users (nearly 4.5 billion) use mobile devices like mobile phones, tablets, and laptops, of which 78% rely on mobile phones exclusively to engage on social media platforms.
Digital marketing experts suggest businesses should benefit from this engagement by pitching their customer support services on social platforms to help customers reach the ventures effortlessly.
It is easy, effective, and quick for customers & brands to adopt the social chat mode compared to the other forms of interaction like sending emails through the company’s email addresses and submitting forms on a website in the inquiry process.
Social media giants like Facebook, with around 2.85 billion users, have designed Meta Business Suite, a solution for businesses & customers through which it helps brands understand customers' and target audiences' pain points and share the relevant solutions according to their needs.
Businesses use this trend to achieve customer satisfaction by providing a fast medium to get in contact with companies to get their issue heard and resolved which in turn helps companies gain loyalty. In addition, they build trust and improve their reputation in the crowd, which enables repeat business and long-term association with customers.
7. Audio Marketing
While the community platforms are harnessing the video content to attract users, audio content is on track to provide an innovative experience by making the business intent audible to the users in the background without any disruption.
Do you know? Around 68% of the population uses audio platforms every month, with an average spending time of 15 to 16 hours a week.
Platforms like Spotify, Amazon Music, and YouTube are organizing a channel where the users will get their relevant content in the audio format and listen to ads side by side.
Businesses use these channels to gain the listeners' attention by promoting their business, products, and services to those who spend time listening to music, podcasts, or radio while working or playing games.
Conclusion
The trends of community-based marketing in 2023 are taking shape for the future and substantially help businesses contend with their competitors by standing out of the crowd.
So, are you a business planning to step into social media for branding? It is essential to introspect your intuitions about the above trends. Experts suggest beginners take the help of marketing agencies that have exceptional skills, effective internet marketing services knowledge, and tools to adopt and implement the trends for their business to prosper in the future.
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