12 Social Marketing Predictions From The Pros.
From The Social Media Examiner
What I Learned from this reading and what I found most interesting about each section. Here are some of the things I found most helpful, interesting and informative.
1. Facebook Ad Costs Push Advertisers Off the Platform.
According to this read, Facebook advertising is going to get much more expensive in 2020. CPMs will increase, which means it will cost more to reach out to targeted audiences.
The implication of this change is that "companies with a low average order value or that don’t change how they evaluate their Facebook advertising returns will be priced out of the platform." So the author of this article suggest the following:
The first is to decrease your cost per purchase or cost per lead. There are numerous ways to do this.
The second, which requires no work in your ad account, is to increase your average order value or client value.
The third way to combat increasing Facebook ad costs goes back to an earlier point: Change the way you evaluate your Facebook advertising returns.
The statement, “the business that can pay the most for a customer wins” has never been truer. The solution to combating increasing Facebook ad costs is threefold.
2. LinkedIn CPC Climbs Higher.
To get the highest ROAS on your LinkedIn advertising in 2020.
First, I recommend that you always bid on CPC regardless of the ad format because it presents the lowest risk to you as the advertiser. Additionally, CPC bids tend to be significantly lower than bidding by engagement or impression 90% of the time.
When you bid on CPC, begin low (at the base bid) and only raise your bid when you need more traffic. LinkedIn won’t initially tell you what the minimum bid is, so start low—say $2. LinkedIn will then give you a message in red that tells you what the minimum bid is; now you know where to set your opening bid.
Second, disregard LinkedIn’s bidding recommendations. Most often, LinkedIn will select auto-bidding, which is crazy-expensive and the likelihood that your ads will fall into the 10% of affordable bids is low.
Finally, don’t use audience expansion. It’s just not worth it to pollute the traffic you’re paying for by letting LinkedIn advertise to someone you didn’t select to be in your audience.
3. Rising Ad Costs Lead Marketers to Refocus on Organic Video Content.
The one thing that caught my interest about this point was: Smart marketers are making investments in high-value video content that’s super-useful to future customers. We’ll see increased use of IGTV and YouTube content in social marketing. And yes, that YouTube content will be promoted using Facebook! The power of visuals should not be underestimated.
4. Stories Are Central to Visibility on Facebook and Instagram.
The main idea about this point is using your video and creativity to engage a targeted group of people. Video is a very powerful tool when it comes to story telling and if used correctly.
Other notable trends and changes marketers would do well to observe is any new ad unit and/or ad placement options that Facebook and Instagram roll out. These include ads in search results on Facebook and ads in Instagram Explore. Video content will also continue to grow across all social platforms.
5. Personalized Brand-to-Customer Experiences Are No Longer Optional.
Brands that haven’t focused on relationship marketing techniques will either spend more on their pay-to-play model or dive into building and hosting community conversations that create brand advocates and support a belonging vs. buying mindset.
In 2020, a company’s story must be felt by its audience. The process of doing business must be easy for companies to win, keep, and activate their audience into becoming advocates.
6. Template-base Marketing Fails to Produce Results.
Social media is saturated and the cream really does rise to the top. To understand how to sell your product or service to your audience on social media in 2020, you really need to understand three things.
- What types of content your ideal customer actually enjoys consuming and where they want to see it.
- What content and where to put it to attract, convince, and convert your prospects.
- The decision-making process your prospects go through to identify and choose a supplier to help them with the problem you solve.
7. Reducing Platform Channels Produces Better Results.
Advertising costs will continue to rise. You’ll either need to build stronger ad strategies or stronger organic strategies.
Take the time to master the algorithm on one platform at a time, and make sure you can put a considerable amount of energy into every platform you manage.
8. Niched Marketing is Key to Success.
In 2020, the race isn’t to be everywhere and reach everyone but to reach the right people with focused intent. It’s about choosing the quality of engagements over the quantity of engagements.
Choose two platforms and excel on them. Choose these platforms based on your ideal client, your best-performing content to date, and the platform demographics.
9. LinkedIn and Pinterest Regain Traction.
There's been a resurgence of LinkedIn throughout 2019, and that will only continue to build momentum in 2020. The ad platform on LinkedIn has a long-held reputation of being prohibitively expensive for most small businesses and difficult to achieve a positive result on, but that will also change in 2020. We’re already starting to see ads on LinkedIn become more effective as they improve the platform for advertisers. The author believes that will continue in 2020.
Pinterest holds a unique position as a social platform in that it behaves much more like a search engine than other social media platforms. This is why they author thinks marketers will give it more attention in 2020. Investments of time and effort in traditional social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn only deliver results for a short period of time.
10. Personalized Micro-Engagements Are Essential.
Small businesses that struggle to sustain a share of voice in the marketplace can make a deep impact with two strategic uses of Instagram. Social media is all about visuals and creativity.
11. Authentic Content trumps Polished Marketing.
2020 is the year of humanized marketing, and the business that provides all-access, behind-the-scenes, contextual marketing wins. Here are six tips to help you beat the bandwagon marketers with authenticity:
The one thing that is crucial about this step is being authentic. Use your personal social media to show your authenticity, from TikTok to Snapchat and Facebook live... youse your creativity and tell the truth.
12. AI Makes Humanizing your Brand Imperative.
Artificial intelligence (AI) will be the beginning of the end of marketing as we know it. 2020 will officially mark the start of the next industrial revolution and the social media industry will be affected in a variety of ways.
Humanizing your brand is more than a catchy hook. It’s a real business strategy that every marketer should take seriously to stay in business. There are five ways to humanize your brand in the next year.
1. Create content as if it's coming from an individual. 2. Engage in actual conversations. 3. Highlight the employees behind your brand. 4. Give a voice to the customer who help make your brand what it is. 5. Don't try to be all things to all people.
