In 2022, ‘why brands need to be on social media and focus on digital marketing’ is a no-brainer. To answer this simply, the numbers are so huge that brands just can’t ignore social media.
As per Hootsuite research, a staggering 4.7 billion people, which is about 59% of world population, is present on social media platforms as on July 2022. There is no other platform or place in the world that can boast of such high numbers. If you are a brand, you should want to be at a place where the gathering of people is as humongous as this.
If you think that with such high numbers, social media presence would have reached its ceiling limit, then you can’t be further away from truth. Statista research suggests that by the year 2027, about 5.85 billion people will be on social media. Hence social media platforms are and will be the largest catchment platform across the world.
If the users use social media only for fleeting moments, then brands can afford to skip their presence on social media. However, the numbers tell a strikingly different tale. In a survey of US adults conducted by Pew Research Center, it was found that a large chunk of the users present on social media visit the platform multiple times a day and end up spending about 2.5 hours a day there.
To put this in perspective, imagine that you own a large mall in the city. If you can somehow make an average customer spend about 2.5 hours in your mall every single day then the sales in your mall would shoot through the roof. No wonder then that some of these social media companies (like the mall promoters) are some of the most successful, sought-after and fastest growing young companies of the world.
Thanks to the low-cost internet availability and high mobile penetration, people across the world are accessing free social media as shown in the below image by Hootsuite. Not only are these people available to access your brand on social media, the smartly evolved advertising tools of digital marketing help you target the right people and the right demographic effectively and efficiently. So your brand can reach out to them easily if and when you want.
So how many social media platforms the brand should be on? As shown in this digital trend report by Hootsuite, there is a large overlap of common users across social media platforms.
So, when the brand is thinking of creating a digital presence, they don’t need to be everywhere. To begin with, just be present on the top social media platforms like Facebook, You Tube, LinkedIn, Instagram and so on. Facebook is by far the most popular social media platform. You Tube is the second most popular search engine and people spend a lot of time there. LinkedIn is the largest professional network in the world so your brand must be present there. Instagram is where the young and happening are, so don’t give it a miss.
Such a large global audience at your disposal would mean nothing if brands don’t make effort to attract their target segment to their doorstep through digital marketing. Using smart communication, attractive design and effective social media marketing techniques, you can create a community of followers that resonate with your brand and its philosophy.
Once you have a community that relates with your brand, you can create an effective feedback loop provided by the community that cares for your brand. This makes your social media page an effective sounding board for complaints and suggestions, which, if used wisely, can significantly reduce the product, service or process evolution curve and help your community believe that their voices are being heard.
However large the numbers are, your brand is not a magnet that would attract followers unless your brand works its way towards it. The brand needs to engage with the online crowd which then surely starts following you. The digital marketing function, be it in-house or through a digital marketing agency, focuses on how to engage with the prospects online and build a community of followers which builds the brand and sales.
How about connecting with us so you could explore what value we can bring to your brand through HCF Click, our digital marketing function builds the brand, digitally.
