More and more, brands are trying to build a connection with their customers. That connection is valuable because it means repeat sales and effortless marketing through online sharing.
The Confusion
Marketing strategies and tactics change more rapidly than consumers think. Corporations are constantly trying to solve issues like, “How do we get more leads?” or “How can I create brand awareness?” and ultimately “How do we make more sales?” Efficient businesses will make an effort to stay ahead of the market and attempt to predict the next trend or shift while the less organized businesses are still trying to develop a marketing plan around the current existing market, which is effectively too late. Staying ahead of the game involves making calculated predictions based on human behavior and Social patterns.
What changed in 1997?
Six Degrees, the world’s first modern social network launched and a new marketing platform was born in 1997. Today, social hubs including FaceBook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Snapchat are where $17.3 Billion worth of marketing dollars are spent annually (www.statista.com, 2017). What used to be a childish way of posting low quality images and sending brief text through the Internet has grown to a multi-billion dollar industry an is used by all age groups and demographics. Today, roughly 68% of U.S. adults are members of FaceBook and update their profile as well as consume content from a variety of other pages. It’s even more intense amongst the younger generations with 76% of teenagers having an active Instagram accounts in 2018 (sciencedaily.com).
What’s really going on
More and more, brands are trying to build a connection with their customers. That connection is valuable because it means repeat sales and effortless marketing through online sharing. However, this connection is equally vulnerable, and involves a great deal of trust. Brands and companies create a steady stream of content in forms consisting of text, images, and video to release on a consistent basis. For years, the lives of the “decision-makers” within a company have been completely behind closed doors. The instant connection-bridge between those business owners and their clients is something that has never existed before. Some CEO’s are taking advantage by going so far as vlogging (video-blogging) their lives in order to build trust and the personal connection between the company and potential/previous customers
The future of social
Over the last two years, Instagram has doubled in size with an average of over 80 million posts being made daily. With 3.196 billion people using Social Media, up 13% from last year, there’s something to be said about how this will impact the market over the next decade. Digital sharing and techniques integrated into these platforms are based around how humans operate and what we desire. As the younger generation gets older, and they begin to take the places of the current corporate workers, it seems logical to assume that the influence social media has on a corporate market, is only going to rise.
How marketing fits in
Where there is an audience, there will be companies trying to make a sale. Ads have not fully saturated the social media market, as they have cable television, but it sure looks like it’s headed in that direction. Banner ads, video ads, video/photo sharing, content tagging, and collaborations are just a few of the marketing strategies within social media. There is an ever growing list of tactics and methods to capture attention and convert social media users into customers. Often times the strategies don’t focus on making a sale initially, they are more so focused on hooking the target and directing them to a website’s landing page, designed to fit a specific demographic or targeted market.
Application to the corporate world
The grey area in this debate is finding out, “Does it apply to the corporate world?”
It’s natural to assume that Instagram and FaceBook content would make for a great ROI if you were selling T-shirts or iPhone apps, but what about the market for high-ticket items like motor vehicles, biotech products, or safety inventions. In the 2019 corporate market, it is going to be imperative to maintain daily, quality content, in all forms, across all platforms. 90 of the top 100 brands in the world have an active Instagram account. Depending on your target demographic, your Instagram page may be more important than your website. As of 2018, 90% of Instagram users are under the age of 35 (brandwatch.com). Linkedin is a different story and has more of a professional feel to it. You likely won’t collect much traffic or engagement through Linkedin unless your doing primarily B2B business.
In conclusion
It seems logical to think that with such a massive audience and rapid growth that large corporations would be pouncing on the opportunity to market to their customers. This is partially the case. The reason it’s not absolute is because these social networks are all individual and each platform has features and capabilities that make it appeal more to a specific audience for a more narrow purpose. For example, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook are great places for local coffee shops, clothing brands, and small products. These networks are primarily social and used for recreational purposes, making it tough to filter out the photos from your old frat brothers latest basement party and informational content developed to target a certain buyer that will hopefully convert into a sale. However, the social network LinkedIn, seems to have the best business to fun ratio for businessmen and women to network and contribute their thoughts.
Check out the New Evolution Video demo reel, designed for the corporate market.
The post Social Media In Today’s Corporate Market appeared first on Corporate Video Production - New Evolution Video.
