Even when many businesses are starting to reopen physical shops, a large portion of advertising and marketing efforts are still online. This is because the online habits developed by consumers during the pandemic are not expected to roll back but will instead continue to grow.
Popular Internet and Social Media Usage
During the pandemic, people worldwide turned more toward the internet as a source of connection, information, and online shopping. According to DataReportal’s Digital 2021 July Global Statshot report, 61 percent of the total world population use the internet, increasing about six percent from 2020. In the United States, 92 percent of the population are internet users.
Daily usage of the internet averages almost seven hours, which is more than double the amount of time people watch television. This highlights why companies are continuing to spend more on digital marketing over traditional marketing efforts.
Social Networks and Marketing
Social networks top the online channels, with 95.7 percent of netizens using them and growing by 13 percent from 2020 to 2021. People spend an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes on social media to find out what people are talking about, seek inspiration for purchases and activities, look for products to buy, and look for content from their favorite brands.
Facebook is the most popular social media platform, with 2.853 billion users, followed by YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram, FB Messenger, and WeChat. TikTok is a new platform that is growing in popularity. Following closely are QQ, Douyin, Telegram, Sina Weibo, and Snapchat. Other social media apps with global users are Kuaishou, Pinterest, Reddit, Twitter, and Quora. Because of the enormous popularity of social media, social media marketing is truly the best way to reach consumers online.
Streamlining Social Media Marketing Efforts
Almost all social media users use smartphones. Digital marketers must, therefore, optimize social media marketing campaigns for use on smartphones. It is still essential to ensure that they are accessible on tablets and laptops, as well, to expand coverage. It does not cost much to ensure this compatibility.
Furthermore, digital marketers must appropriately target their audience in social media marketing campaigns to maximize their resources. Launching campaigns on all social media platforms is wasteful. First, it is essential to determine which social media channels a brand’s target market congregates in. These are the only platforms to spend on profitably. It is wise to invest in studies that identify social media channels’ demographics and keep such studies updated. Netizens, especially the youth, are quick to jump on different platforms.
Utilize Interactive Posts
Social media users are known to respond well to interactive posts. As a digital marketer, you can employ various polls on the platform to gather demographic data and other information such as buying preferences. The latest digital marketing trends use artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze data and produce actionable insights. These valuable insights must be used to craft social media campaigns that address the target market’s needs and wants.
Consumers love to post their content. They can be encouraged to post their photos or videos showing the product or service they used on the brand’s social media pages. These are very effective as peer-to-peer endorsements and are valued by other consumers more highly than packaged advertisements.
Social media influencers are also very effective in popularizing products and services. Keep in mind, digital marketers must correctly identify the influencers that their target market follows. These influencers can lead social media marketing campaigns. If the target market is highly segmented, each segment can have its appropriate influencer.
Employ Artificial Intelligence for Personalization
Consumers are seeking more personalized services from brands. AI can tailor each visitor’s online experience based on data from the person’s previous online behavior, including search results and previous purchase history.
On social media, AI can show specific ads to each visitor. When the visitor clicks through to the brand’s website, AI can customize the displays to display goods and services curated to the visitor’s taste.
Why Engagement Is Crucial in Campaigns
A brand must deepen its relationship with each consumer through social media engagement. A social media marketing team must take shifts to have someone on hand to quickly reply to online queries, day and night, even on weekends and holidays.
The brand must have a unified tone in its posts and responses, reflecting the brand’s personality. For instance, a sporty brand targeting the youth must have a very different feel from a brand that sells baby products to mothers. The social media marketing team must be properly trained to sustain this effort.
Properly used, social media marketing is one of the most powerful tools for digital marketing. To run an effective digital marketing campaign, social media marketers must find the niche or niches of their target audience and speak their language to make the connection.
