Written in partnership with Brand News
Photo Credit: Aaron Branch
Social media marketing is far from easy for all its promises of a cheaper and effective modern marketing strategy. Amid continuous updates, fierce competition, rapid yet unpredictable shifts in markets and consumer interests, privacy regulations, and ever-changing technology, social media can be frustrating as it is powerful.
To help you stay ahead of the curve of social media advertising in 2021, we talked to the author of The First 365 and CEO of the social media ad agency Social Agendas Marketing, Aaron Branch. From his insights, we compiled a list of new and continuing shifts in trends that you should keep an eye on:
Video Content Will Dominate Social Feeds
Any visit to your social pages and you will notice that video content is dominating your feeds. As of 2019:
- 92% of video viewers on smartphones share it with other people
- Videos garner 1,200% more shares than text and picture content put together.Â
- 72% of consumers prefer to learn or discover a product or service through video
- Users spend over 88% more time on web pages that feature videos
- 54% of consumers would like to see more video content from brands they support.Â
- According to Hubspot, 82% of internet traffic by 2022 will be video content.Â
These stats support Aaron Branch’s predictions that 2021 should be the year your brand needs to step up and include more video content across the internet.Â
Influencer Marketing
According to Influencer Marketing Hub, For every $1 spent on influencer advertising, businesses make $5.20.
Influencer marketing goes hand in hand with paid ads, as consumers are wary of faceless corporate labels. Consumers value reviews and other social proofs more than they trust the brand.
Social media platforms are the influencer’s haven, and you don’t have to worry about a big budget. There are influencers for all price tags. You just have to find the right one for your brand and grow with them. People prefer micro-influencers because they relate with the aspirational ads, and an everyday person executes that very well.
Social Media E-commerce Will Scale
It was only a matter of time, but Covid escalated the merge between social media and e-commerce. 42% of millennials and most Gen Z spend 3X more time shopping on Instagram and snap chat than the average consumer.
As much as he still loves to visit brick-and-mortar shops every once in a while for shopping, Aaron Branch, along with 87% of online shoppers, admit that social media helps enhance the customer shopping experience. It makes it easier to make purchasing decisions all at the comfort of their homes.Â
Stories Will Take Center Stage
Twitter and Youtube now have the story feature. Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook adapted it when they couldn’t buy Snapchat.Â
Stories have been growing 15X faster than traditional feeds, and 62% more people gain interest in a product after viewing its ad in a report. Marketers can build rapport and capitalize on millennial’s fear of missing out by adapting their ads to the disappearing stories formats.Â
Through his ad agency Social Agendas, Aaron Branch has leveraged social media’s power to help scale businesses to unimaginable heights. He achieves this by adapting his advertising strategy to influential social media trends as they occur. It’s the only way to stay ahead amid dynamic changes in the marketing world. Sign up for The Start and Scale Agency Program and learn how to propel yourself and your business towards unimaginable heights in a short period.
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