Pandemic saw social media spending increase to 23% of marketing budgets as pandemic had forced people to stay indoors and companies used digital marketing to increase their outreach. By 2022, companies were using 57% of their spending on digital marketing and with the recent adoption of automation and AI for content generation, it further led to digitization of business models.
This period of growth has been followed by a period of decline where social media spending has declined from 17% in spring 2023 to 11% in spring 2024 which has been dubbed as the lowest levels in seven years.
Some of the reasons for spending going down is that social media has become a cluttered landscape now and this is making difficult for ads to capture consumer’s attention which is leading to driving advertisers away from social media as brands are seeking more effective ways for connecting with their target audience.
There is so much of content on the internet which is causing social media fatigue which is also causing reducing attention spans which is getting distributed among several websites and this is causing marketers to search for different ways of reaching out to consumers.
Also, as per a survey conducted by CMO, social media has not delivered any specific gains to marketers. Finding out the impact of marketing is itself a challenge for many companies and these challenges have multiplied in the world of social media where focus lies on finding out new customers and building brand. These multi-channel environment is further challenging abilities of companies to track journey of customer through to purchase. People who are spending less time on social media are now moving towards long form and immersive content such as newsletters, podcasts and video streaming platforms which are seeing increased engagement as users are looking for meaningful content now. The importance of direct website traffic and search engines are gaining importance. Brands which would be investing in SEO and website experiences would be having a better chance of attracting attention.
The decline in social media does not mean that digital marketing is towards an end but this means that marketers should change their approach. Rather than looking at engagement on crowded platforms, brands should be looking towards investing in owned media channels such as websites, email lists and podcasts. Affiliate market should move beyond social media for traffic generation and instead move towards partnership with high quality websites, search optimized content and video marketing which provides long term traffic stability. Business which depend upon social media for exploring ways for connecting with their audience should look for new ways for connecting with the audience and look at creation of exclusive content for subscriber based platforms or experiment with emerging social apps before they become saturated.
Brand which will adapt will survive whereas the ones relying on old strategies would be left behind. Here if we talk about private communities or messaging apps, they could be another area of growth. Though public social media feeds are on the verge of decline, platforms like Telegram, Whatsapp and Slack are emerging as key space for digital conversations. Some brands are working towards direct engagement through customer support chatbots, private membership communities and Whatsapp marketing.
So what kind of innovations can help in getting over these problems:
Make use of LLMs for generation of social content, integration across channels, improvising to stay relevant, forming better influencer collaboration and last but not the least being creative in whatever you do to get the best out of social media.
