Social Media Branding Strategies To Follow In 2018

Every company in today’s competitive world is after creating a long and everlasting impact on their customers. Every time we step out to shell out some bucks we look for a brand. We don’t like to compromise a brand for money. So, we can see how a proper branding of a product is so valuable for continuous growth of our business. Businesses are trying to figure out their target audiences and best fit products or services for their target audiences through various social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. Until 2017, in social media marketing, platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, WordPress, Tumblr played a major role in branding. There are few social media branding strategies needed in 2018 and brands should keep an eye on these while preparing marketing strategies.

Strategy 1 | Embracing Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

Imagine a user experience where shoppers can try your products and make a buying decision without walking into the store. Have you experienced Lens kart’s augmented and virtual reality on their product landing page? Yes, they use both strategies to help users decide on their purchase by providing them a live experience about the product. In short, Virtual reality uses a 360- degree product view to move you from your current environment to a virtual world. On the other hand, Augmented reality adds digital insights to transform the current environment. Therefore, virtual reality replaces your sight, augmented reality enhances it. So, let’s look at some key facts which will help us decide to embrace these technologies.

• 25% of the brands will embrace AR to enhance their end-user experience and it will record more spending starting from 2018 to 2022.
• In 2017 end, 37% of world’s population is active on social media. In 2018, most of the giants and mid-level brands are going to incorporate AR to stay ahead in the market.
• AR & VR users will hit 200 million by 2018 and 65% of the online customers will make a purchasing decision on the product landing page. AR advertising spending would be on the higher side than VR. Businesses, marketers should bet big on using AR on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.

Strategy 2 | Embracing Investment In Influencer Marketing

Social Media is all about influencing and attracting your customers towards your brand. Furthermore, businesses focus on influential people to influence potential buyers and influencer marketing is proven to be the best way of marketing in social media in 2017. It will continue to be a focus of smart marketers from the beginning of 2018.

Also, let’s find out who all are our mega, macro and micro influencers in social media. Mega influencers are the celebrities in social media and they have typically more than a million followers. Macro influencers are typically business professionals or famous product specialist or freelancers. They typically have approximately ten thousand to a million followers. And, micro influencer category has 500- 1000 followers because they are mini-celebrities in their own circle. Working with micro influencers can provide best results if the business is following a long- tail strategy. So, let’s dig down to the facts of influencer marketing and why it could be useful for marketers.

• Influencer marketing delivers 11 times more ROI than traditional digital marketing. The need for Marketer interest in Influencer marketing increased 90x from 2013 to 2016. This has been drastically doubled in first nine months of 2017 and the same is excepted in 2018.
• People follow and highly seek for influencers in social media platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook. To attract customers and promote products or services, most of the businesses decide to include influencers having thousands of followers. In return, the high demand Social media personalities increase the value of services.
• Video content would be the biggest platform for influencer marketing in 2018 with a presence in social media. A report shows that videos are twice as effective to lead generation or drive sales as normal text-based contents.
• 49% people depend on the influencers engagement on their purchase decisions.
• Twitter users reported 5.2 times increase in purchasing decisions made when they are exposed to influencer contents.

Strategy 3 | Focus On Gen Z

According to a recent study conducted by Goldman Sachs, Gen Z is more valuable to any business. Did you know that from a span of 2018 to 2020, Gen Z will account for 40% of all consumers? The oldest Gen Z’s are avg. 22-year-old and businesses are planning to move their marketing strategy based on Gen Z’s need. 2018 will experience a big bet investment made in Snapchat or Instagram which are loved by Gen Z’s.

Gen Z’s represent a buying power of $44 billion and influence an additional $600 billion of family spending. This includes over 70% of family food choices and 80%- 90% of the items are purchased for them. Marketers need to make the video content more engaging and especially relevant, Gen z’s have an 8- second filter for any digital content. According to the research report, 9 out of 10 Gen Z’s watch YouTube daily, 70% prefer streaming over broadcast or cable TV.

Strategy 4 |Increasing Brand Participation In messaging Platforms

While approx. 2.5 billion people use various messaging platforms and yet, brands focus on connecting with consumers on social networks. It is high time that brands should focus on messaging platforms which comes handy for customers to use and communicate. It is likely that brands will invest more in 2018 in time and money to connect with consumers in messengers. Technologies like artificial intelligence, voice assistants, and chatbots will enable brands to offer personalized shopping experiences on messaging platforms like WhatsApp, messenger etc.

Strategy 5 | Invest In Popular Social Media Platforms Of 2017

Don’t you think this can be a great strategy to embrace the familiar social media platforms and make more investments to enhance them? Therefore, few points will help marketers take appropriate decisions.

• There must be an increasing popularity of Instagram stories. Over 200 million people use Instagram stories each month, which is over 50 million more who use snap chat. As a result, half of the Instagram users will use stories at the end of 2018 and brands must take time to master their stories.
• Expansion of live streaming is going to be a great way to capture the attention of the followers in social media. 2018 would be a booming year for more and more brands to introduce live streaming to their customers to enhance customer experience.
• Twitter branding strategy needs rethinking. Twitter has failed to grow followers significantly in 2017, therefore, Twitter leadership will aim to rethink on the platform which includes revamping the Twitter advertising options.
• Marketers need attention in the recent Facebook business strategy. Facebook is coming up with a new technology called “Spaces” which is designed to allow friends and followers to connect in Virtual Reality. Facebook will be the first successful VR social media platform for marketing.

In conclusion, marketers should be clear about the objective, target audience, a clearly defined outline to measure KPIs and last but not the least, make sure your goals are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Agreed-upon, Realistic and Time-Based).

Niti Chowdhury