By Sarah Maschoff
Social media plays a major role in most marketing campaigns, usually to encourage brand awareness and user engagement. In 2024, that role should be reconsidered as social channels become a way to not only reach viewers but also buyers.
Many brands haven’t taken a solid look at their social set up since sometime in the 2010s. And in this new age of Social Discovery, Social SEO and AI, brands must put down the outdated playbook of a decade ago and recognize the shifting behaviors that require them to make changes across their social strategy.
As we head into a new year, brands must break out of these stale social encampments and bring their social media marketing from 2010 to 2024.
Social Discovery Brings In Ready-Made Buyers
Social discovery is the act of discovering a brand’s products or services through social channels rather than through traditional search. This doesn’t mean getting a buyer’s attention by bombarding them with ads while they engage in their nightly doom scroll.
Real social discovery is made through profile optimization (social SEO), social commerce and influencer partnerships. Without these tools, organizations are doomed to keep paying for a potential customer’s attention instead of earning it.
This trend won’t away any time soon. A recent survey confirmed online product searches are increasing on social channels, while traditional keyword searches on Amazon and search engines are ticking down.
That’s not to say a behemoth like Google is down for the count – it just means brands must expand their marketing strategy to encompass this new reality.
Diversify Your Strategy
As millennials and Gen Xers move into the “old people” camp of social media users, their behavior contrasts even more with younger audiences like Gen Z.
For older users (i.e., most of us born in the last century), promoted posts or ads still generate a fair number of clicks. But for Gen Zers, traditional ads have become tiresome with most users making purchasing decisions based on influencer recommendations.
Brands should avoid taking a one-size-fits-all approach to their social strategy and begin to diversify the who, how and why of connecting with their audience.
Steps to Setting Up Social Discovery on Your Social Channels
- Embrace influencers
Influencers have become de rigueur for brands in this new social age. As younger consumers become more accustomed to making their buying choices based on influencer recommendations, brands must think seriously about incorporating influencers into their marketing if they want to continue to reach young, influential buyers.
- Update your profile with Social SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is not just related to the likes of Google, Bing and Duck-Duck-Go. Brands can, and should, optimize their social channels for SEO.
All social platforms have search bars. And like on Google, users search for things using keywords. For example, a jewelry brand that includes popular keywords like “best watches for women” or “holiday earring sets” in their social profile’s name, handle and bio will likely show up more often during regular social searches than competitors that only provide basic profile information.
On top of that, adding things like alt-tags on photos and subtitles in videos can give brands even more chances of being found.
- Tap into social commerce
While this might not apply to all brands, those who normally traffic in standard ecommerce should also be set up for social commerce. A relatively new thing, social commerce has become a popular way for people to buy products, allowing them to stay within a specific platform to make their purchase.
A major part of social discovery is making products easy to find and easy to buy. Social commerce requires fewer steps when making a purchase, which decreases drop-offs, increases sales and creates happier customers.
- Embrace a customer-centric approach
A customer-centric approach means less “the customer is always right” and more “the customer is always at the forefront.”
This year’s Sprout Social Index™ highlighted that 30% of consumers will abandon a brand for one of its competitors if the brand doesn’t communicate effectively.
As a result, marketing strategies should focus not only on getting customers for that first purchase, but also keeping them around for the long-haul.
To do this, brands must engage with customers on a one-to-one basis, making them feel seen, heard and appreciated. Bonus points if you can make people laugh.
For a terrific example, look no further than McDonald’s, which is the “big mac” (sorry) of customer-centric social marketing.
Bring in More Buyers This New Year
Social media has a lot of great use cases, but brands looking to increase sales in 2024 should embrace social as a major way to find, connect with and grow customers. The easiest way to accomplish this is to embrace social discovery methods that will ensure brands are successful in this new marketing landscape.
Want to learn more about social discovery, reach out to us at [email protected].
Sarah is a content marketing director at Allison. She helps lead content marketing efforts for Allison’s Marketing Innovation Team, taking a personal, data-driven approach to building strategies and initiatives that meet the specific needs of clients and their audiences. Sarah has nearly a decade of experience in content marketing, working with clients across a multitude of industries from B2B software, insurance and healthcare to beauty, travel and retail.
