What Does the Future Hold For Social Media Marketing Companies?

In the UK, a staggering 45 million people use social media on a regular basis.  Whether its uploading videos to TikTok or finding new career opportunities on LinkedIn, social media is an integral part of daily life for a huge number of people and, therefore, an incredibly important marketing tool. 

Socially Speaking

In today’s world, most businesses have an online presence, including a Facebook page, a website and a Twitter account, and social media is big business for UK companies with a projected net worth by 2025 of $12 billion (approximately £9 billion).  As well as helping businesses to reach more customers, social media helps brands to better understand their target audience in order to retain existing customers for longer. At present, common social media business activities include regular posting, social media advertising and the sharing of content, including blog posts, articles and video explainers. 

Forward Thinking

In a world where technology advances at breakneck speed, digital marketing is a fluid and rapidly evolving creature and, as such, never stands still for long.  In this section, we’ll take a look at some of the ways in which social media marketing may change in the next five years: 

To understand how social media marketing might change,the best SEO company in London says that we first need to examine how customer behaviour will evolve.  In 2022, customers want huge amounts of information – and they want it fast!  For this reason, social media marketing will adapt to deliver this in a few ways: 

Video

Video marketing is, of course, already used by a large number of brands and is likely to become even more important in the future.  Why?  Video allows brands to get their message across quickly and easily in an easy to digest format.  In 2020, 96% of consumers reported an increase in video consumption – with nine out of ten of these saying that they would like to see more video marketing from brands. 

Omnichannel Marketing

In the early days of social media, it was common for users to pick a platform and stick with it, however, those days are now gone.  A significant majority of internet users now bounce from one platform to another throughout the day, meaning that brands are often scrambling to keep up with them.  For this reason, marketers will need to be focusing on seamless omnichannel marketing to ensure that they are reaching their customers wherever they may be.  By getting hold of some great SEO optimisation packages, you can also see significant results in your search ranking using omnichannel marketing.  Any marketer who needs SEO services will tell you that your first step is to find yourself a great and affordable SEO company. 

User Generated Content

Think about the last time you purchased a product or service online – there’s a good chance that, before you headed to the checkout, you checked out some reviews to see what other people thought.  User-generated content is a great way of letting your customers do your work for you and, can even allow you to turn your customers into brand ambassadors.  You do need to put in a bit of legwork first though – make sure that you’re properly engaging with your customers on your social media platforms – and that you’re constantly and consistently inviting feedback.  These days, customers are increasingly demanding and social media users say that they actively favour brand who connect with them on their various platforms. This can involve starting a dialogue with a customer or, something as simple as liking or sharing a customer’s post. 

The Metaverse

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last year or so, you’ll probably have come across this term a few times.  The Metaverse essentially offers a virtual world in which people can move around, touch objects and experience new things.  What’s that got to do with marketing?  Quite a lot actually.  A number of brands are already exploring the possibility of linking their socials to the Metaverse in order to create an immersive customer experience.  For example, a clothing brand might take a Facebook follower by the hand and lead them to a store in the Metaverse where they can browse items and even try on outfits.  While this may sound a little science fiction, it’s actually fast becoming a (virtual) reality and, will prove to be a really useful tool for forward thinking businesses. 

Conclusion

In a fast moving world, brands can no longer afford to sit back and relax when it comes to their social media marketing.  Social media advertising costs tend to be extremely affordable and allow for easy to track results. The good news for social media companies is that they will become more and more in demand as social media becomes the main digital marketing channel.  In the past, many businesses have treated their social media as an afterthought to be conducted in house by random personnel.  In 2022, most brands are waking up to the importance of social media – and are looking to the experts to help them make the most of it.