As we all know 2020 has been an interesting year, especially in the digital marketing realm. We have, for instance, seen increased growth and competition in the digital marketing space. And with growth and new competition we are also detecting new trends. Social media platforms are continuing to scale due to COVID. People are at home more than ever and spending more time online, and this has provided a giant freeway for people to experiment on especially in the ecommerce world. Being able to reach your audience through organic and paid strategies is more important than ever.
With Q4 almost over, it's time to start looking into the new year and how your socials can elevate your company to success. Today we are going to go over a couple of tips to give you the best chance to achieve this success.
Instagram Placements
With how successful paid advertising has been this year, there are bound to be new ways for these companies to capitalize on new ad placements. One of the biggest social media brands to look out for this coming year is Instagram.
Instagram’s big brother Facebook has a plethora of ad placements on their platform. However, Instagram has only three options you can access for advertising: Feed, Stories and Explore. Something that might come into play is Reel ads. We recommend getting into reels organically to see how they function is best. You can get familiar with it by using your own brand and learning what creatives work best to attract customers.
IGTV has become much more prevalent since its launch in 2018. Companies are now including these in their organic strategy. These are great for teaser videos on new product launches. You can combine this by adding a shorter version on your feed to attract traffic. Anyone that is interested can then check the rest of the video on your IGTV. Starting in May there will be a beta test for creators to help them monetize their IGTV channels.
There are some great techniques for short and long formatted content for you to promote. Start testing now so if the beta rolls out to everyone, you can take quick advantage in executing a new strategy.
Don’t Put All Your Eggs in the Facebook Basket
A golden rule of marketing is to always diversify your digital marketing strategy. Facebook recently had a mass outage where ads were disabled without notice or valid reasoning. With 93% of social media advertisers leveraging Facebook Ads, it is rough to invest only in Facebook and have something like this happen. You don’t need to use a full scale budget on other platforms, but dipping your toes into other platforms such as TikTok, Pinterest, Linkedin, and Twitter can be useful.
Testing these platforms and seeing how your audience interacts with you can uncover a new gold mine for you. Don’t be afraid to ask around about other people’s experience on these platforms and you might get some tips on how to navigate through them.
For example if you are an ecommerce company and you experienced a drop in ads right before the biggest time of the year, it can be scary. At least if a situation like this happens ,having other social media platforms with ads on them you can still get the word out on your advertisements.
Up and Coming Pinterest Ads
It is always a good idea to have multiple back up social media advertising platforms. One you should consider, especially for ecommerce, is Pinterest. Top analysts have said that Pinterest is a top pick to lead 20% growth in online advertising for the upcoming year.
It is true that Pinterest is still considered a new platform for advertisements. However, they are doing a great job in developing opportunities to expand advertising on the platform. Average CPC (cost per click) right now is around $0.13 and is a great area for prospecting customers. So if you have some extra change in your budget we highly suggest testing it out.
If you want to learn more as to why you can check out our blog that discusses everything Pinterest.
We know that it is impossible to predict how 2021 is going to turn out. Let's be honest, we never could have predicted this year and the next one could be equally difficult to predict. But what we do know is that paid social media is growing to the point where it can’t be ignored anymore, especially if you are advertising digitally. It is okay to have a big budget in Facebook Ads, but make sure you are testing other platforms along the way in case something happens. While testing these new platforms you can learn more about your audience and even find a strong platform to redirect your budget to. It will also help to grow your brand and bring brand awareness to your company.