The Importance of Social Media in 2024
While it’s not hard to argue that social media has become a key sales and marketing channel for numerous successful businesses in recent times, you might be wondering:
“How important is social media truly, and how could I benefit from it?”
In this blog we aim to cover exactly that.
Before diving into the strategies, consider these surprising statistics first:
- In 2023, there were 4.48 billion social media users globally
- 46% of these users reported making a purchase influenced by ads on social media platforms.
- 81% of organizations use social media to raise brand awareness
- The market for social media marketing was expected to hit an impressive $207 billion in ad spend.
- LinkedIn accounts for 46% of social media traffic to B2B websites.
Statista’s report on leading sources of information about product research before purchase from Gen Z consumers
Sources:
Organic marketing & branding
We all know that branding is essential in today’s day and age. As highlighted by the statistics, a whooping 81% of businesses use social media to enhance their brand awareness!
What do you think why is that?
Social media stands as the broadest and most cost-effective tactic for increasing brand visibility.
Imagine a single viral video posted by an online business reaching between 10,000 to over a million views. When this reach is combined with consistent valuable content, these impressions can easily convert into website visitors. Over time through engaging content these visitors transform into leads, and eventually, those leads turn into sales.
This approach often brings in a high number of impressions and click with minimal financial investment, relying purely on creative ideas and good editing.
Consider two businesses, Business A and Business B:
Business A is dedicated to creating high-quality content daily and actively engaging its audience on Instagram, which is their platform of choice.
— Instagram has 2.4 billion active monthly users. (DemandSage, 2023.)
Their strategy includes using relevant hashtags, posting regular stories and collaborating with fellow creators as well as their audience.
The expenses primarily for necessary software, amounts to approximately $250/pm for an impressive 200k impressions. The rest is simply a matter of effort and time invested.
In contrast, Business B wants a quicker and easier route to achieve the same number of impressions, choosing to pay for them instead.
This strategy leads to a cost of around $1600/pm, based on a CPM rate of $8.
However it’s important to remember that organic impressions are more likely to convert than paid ones.
Just from glancing at this, it’s clear that Business A achieves not only healthier traffic but also a more efficient marketing approach.
This approach also means that your brand will be visible to more than half the world’s population for absolutely free. Your potential reach is significantly amplified with social media and you should use it to your advantage.
Organic marketing vs paid advertising chart graph
Advice:
Consistently do everything that Business A is doing and before you know it you will be reaping the sweet benefits of warm social media traffic.
Moreover, your brand image will grow exponentially as well, since consistent brand presentation across all channels, including social media, can increase revenue by up to 33%. (Zippia, 2023.)
Now that you see just how powerful organic marketing can be, let’s turn our attention to the most effective strategies emerging in the market.
Trending Social Media Marketing Strategies
Organic UGC’s (User-generated content)
In this approach, brands incentivise their fans to create promotional videos by offering rewards such as gifts, discounts or bonuses in return.
This strategy is particularly effective with discounts, as the broad reach achieved with just a few UGC’s will already pay off the initial investment.
Additionally, positive reviews from others about your product/service make a stronger impression on potential clients/customers compared to self-promotional posts.
This tells you about the immense impact UGC’s are having on the market.
Influencer marketing — 2023 B2C King
This strategy involves collaborations between brands and influencers. Brands often partner with influencers to tap into their large, engaged followings.
In comparison to traditional advertising, influencer marketing offers a more authentic and personal touch. Followers think of influencers’ recommendations as genuine and reliable.
This approach is very effective, as it‘s not hard for an influencer to influence the purchasing decisions of their audience.
This strategy can also boost brand credibility. Your product/service being backed by a important influencer in your niche can mean a lot more than their extensive reach.
In 2023, 71% of B2C organizations engaged in influencer marketing.
(Search Engine Journal, 2023.)
A prime example of just how powerful influencer marketing can be is YoungLA — a fitness fashion brand.
A significant $12.9M or 82% of the brands EMV (Ending market value) in Q2 came from influencers who also mentioned YoungLA in Q1.
Nine of the brand’s top 10 EMV-drivers were influencer fans.
An example of YoungLA’s Influencer marketing
Social Media Trends for 2024
Social media is here to stay and it will only get more important as the time goes on. Every business will need to adapt its rapid rise as a sales channel.
Staying up to date with trends and latest news is crucial in optimizing your content to squeeze every last impression out if it.
Here are a few trends that will dominate 2024:
— Longer videos
Short-form content has been dominant for a long time, but there’s a shift towards longer videos of 2 to 5 minutes. Platforms like IG and TikTok are increasing their max video lengths and user behavior is changing (HootSuite, 2023.)
— Social Commerce
The integration of e-commerce into social media is becoming more and more prominent and we believe that in 2024 it will come in at full effect.
This trend will include features that allow in-app purchases, providing a seamless shopping experience, making online shopping more accessible to everyone.
— Engagement moving to DMs
Engagement is slowly moving more towards DMs rather than public feeds, showing a preference for private, personalized communication.
In a market crowded with brands, this shift highlights the need for businesses to provide special attention to potential customers, going further than just basic retargeting campaigns.
— Micro & Nano influencer
Due to their niche audiences and higher engagement rates, these influencers offer more genuine and trustworthy endorsements for brands. Different than huge celebrity shout outs, this provides a more targeted & cost effective approach.
Micro Influencer (10k-50k followers)
Nano Influencer (<10k followers)
— Social media SEO
The importance of SEO in social media will grow cause of the focus shifting towards keyword optimization over hashtags. The aim of this shift is to boost engagement rates for those leveraging the right keywords in their social media posts.
A graph from statista showing the shar of adults who regularly get news from TikTok
Source: (HootSuite, 2023.)
Picture from: (Statista.com)
— AI for social listening
AI’s role in social listening is becoming more and more significant with its use in trend identification, competitor analysis, sentiment analysis and customer service.
Further advancement will enable businesses to track their online presence and engage with their audience more effectively.
Conclusion
It’s clear that social media is becoming necessary in your business strategy and trends for 2024 provide you with loads of opportunities for growth if used correctly.
Remember to differentiate your brand with unique qualities, as ultimately it’s exactly those unique qualities that make people buy.
The Analyzee team wishes you a 2024 full of meaningful connections, incredible growth and very profitable deals.
For inquiries contact us at sales@analyzee.io
