8 Social Media Marketing Trends to Look Out for in 2020
We are not fortune tellers with a crystal ball in front of us to see into the future. But we can keep a finger on the pulse of the latest marketing trends. And it looks like we are in for a year of exciting developments and opportunities so I am feeling really good about this. To help brands stay ahead of the competition, we explore 8 emerging social media trends for you to implement into your marketing strategy:
1. Popularization of Social Commerce
Online shopping has become more mainstream during the pandemic. As virtual shopping continues to grow, many social networks have expanded on their in-platform tools to help businesses sell items directly from their social media pages. While this practice is new, it’s quickly picking up a lot of steam.
Social media is increasingly being used as a shopping outlet due to eCommerce platforms like Facebook Marketplace, Instagram Shoppable Posts, and Pinterest Buyable Pins, to name a few. Not to mention there are various groups on Facebook and WhatApp dedicated to social selling as well.
Sales made through social commerce in the US have increased by 25.2% reaching over 80 million! That number is forecasted to exceed over 100 million by 2023.
2. Emergence of Instagram Reels for Short- Form Video Content
TikTok provides a social media platform for short-form videos. In the first three months of 2020, TikTok was downloaded by 315 million users around the world thus setting a record for quarterly downloads by any app.
Going head-to-head against TikTok, Instagram launched Instagram Reels in 2020. This app allows users to record and post videos up to 30 seconds in length. According to one study, 82% of content will consist of videos by 2020.
3. Influencer Marketing
While influencer marketing has been trending for years, it will continue to be an important social media strategy in 2020. Business Insider believes that influencer marketing will become a 15-billion-dollar industry by the time 2020 rolls around with most marketers reporting 20 percent or more increase in budget for influencer marketing.
Some important trends to note include an increase in influencer marketing for B2B businesses. We will witness a shift towards micro-influencers due to higher engagement of their audience as well as the adoption of AI (Artificial Intelligence) for content management, analytics, influencer identification, predictions, and more!
4. More Augmented Reality Options for Social Media
An interest in the development of new applications for social media is growing at a steady pace each year. Common examples of social media AR include face filters, stickers, interactive maps, lenses, interactive product displays, and emojis based on user appearance. Some great social media AR to look into are branded filters, AR view or try-on shopping as well as an immersive experience.
Searchers for social media AR have gone up by 81% over 5 years. Though still in its infancy, the AR market is projected to gain momentum in the coming years. AR is expected to become more mainstream as mobile networks become stronger and faster. By 2023, the AR market is expected to generate around 70 billion dollars in annual revenue.
Social media networks are getting in on this trend early. AR has been incorporated into Instagram filters since 2017. Instagram took it a step further with AR in 2019 to include options for users to create their own filters. become stronger and faster. By 2023, the AR market is expected to generate around 70 billion dollars in annual revenue.
Social media networks are getting in on this trend early. AR has been incorporated into Instagram filters since 2017. Instagram took it a step further with AR in 2019 to include options for users to create their own filters.
5. Demand for Bite-Sized Content
It’s an unfortunate fact in modern life, especially in the digital era, that our attention spans have decreased. Studies suggest that the average attention span of most people is 8 seconds. As a result, bite-sized textual/audio/visual/video content dominates the most effective content format.Yes, people are spending more time on social media. But they are spending less time engaging with individual posts. Social media networks and sites are adjusting to this trend by offering bite-sized content such as short-form videos and ephemeral content.
Sorry, lengthy PDF files. You and I are over.
6. More User-Generated Content
User-generated content (UGC) is a form of content that is shared by a user on social media such as images, text, video, and audio. UGC can be a user taking selfies with your product, sharing a video review or product haul, or listing your item among their monthly favorites. The purpose of UGC is to convert customers into brand advocates. This trend offers countless benefits such as minimizing the burden of creating new content, saving time and money, improving reach and engagement, increasing the time length of website visits, and improving customer trust.
It’s a proven fact that brands using UGC are 81% more likely to convert, seeing a 20% increase in return customers and a 90% increase of time spent by visitors on their websites.The only setback of UGC is if your consumer review is negative. Therefore, it’s important to have a social media manager monitor your brand reputation and respond appropriately to negative feedback.
7. Informative-Focused Content
Perfectly curated and aesthetics-driven social media feeds are about to be something in the past that won’t be in any rush to make a comeback if they aren’t already. Consumers are instead turning to social media to learn about a brand’s products, services, and new offerings. This is where informative-focused content comes in.Users want to know more about the value and benefits of your product offering. Therefore, it’s more crucial than ever to produce informative content to boost your lead conversion.
Step-by-step guides, how-to tutorials, behind-the- scenes, infographics, slide shows, lists, resources, tools, case studies, success (personal) stories are some of many ideas for informative-focused content.
8. Alignment of Marketing and Sales
How often do we hear that Sales & Marketing belong together? Yet, these departments work in silos a lot of the time. Marketers used to focus on guiding buyers through the early stages of the buyer’s journey whiles sales are more concentrated on closing deals.
What is the problem with this?
In a word, attribution.
So, which attribution model can you implement to credit both teams fairly? While it’s important to guide the buyer and create brand awareness to make a sale, which makes a marketer’s job more significant, all these brand awareness initiatives do not always guarantee sales. Sales ultimately play a huge part in conversion.
This is why marketing and sales should align with each other to provide a seamless customer experience.
With social media in-shopping features, marketers have more power than they did before to guide customers through the entire sales funnel to conversion and retention.
Synchronization of marketing and sales is one of the biggest upcoming opportunities in social media marketing to improve business performance and subsequently drive revenue.
What other emerging social media marketing trends can you predict for 2020?
