Invest in the Mobile Experience

Heading into 2023, users are tied to their smartphones more than ever, and your e-commerce site needs to be easy to find and intuitive to use on a phone, wherever your customers happen to be when they search. Visual search is increasingly popular, especially among younger users, with many customers likely to use the images results on search to find the product that they want – and increasingly likely to make their purchases from their phones. High-quality, attractive product images with accurate alt-text and content with great SEO will help your site rise to the top of the rankings. Once customers have found your business, it’s important to ensure your site has quick load times and a smooth user experience (UX) on mobile.

Use Customer Feedback to Develop Content

You may not realize it, but when it comes to content creation, you already have a wealth of information available to inform your digital marketing strategy. Look to product reviews, customer feedback, and email campaigns to discover what information your current customers wish they had about your product and business and develop thoughtful, search engine-optimized answers to those questions. Your current customers will thank you and your prospective ones will find you more easily as your content helps your business rise to the top of search results.

Create Content for Multichannel

As you plan your content strategy for 2023, keep in mind the many channels with which your potential customers engage. Whether they find your brand through a search for a specific product, through a post or ad on social media, through reading a review, or directly on your site, customers are likely to research across channels to inform their decision to purchase a product. As they circle through exploration and evaluation (also known to marketers as the “messy middle” of the typical sales funnel), relevant content for every point in the funnel, with actionable next steps, will keep customers moving toward conversion. 

This doesn’t mean you need to create unique content for each phase. With Google’s August 2022 Helpful Content Update, search is becoming more focused on prioritizing human-first content over search-engine-first content. Use the same core content idea and adapt it for different media, from blog posts to videos to infographics, that work well for various channels. Exploring the same key topic from different angles can offer meaningful information for your target audience. 

Enhance Your Social Media Strategy

The social media landscape – and social media advertising – may be undergoing changes, but it’s as important as ever to meet your customers where they are by creating an engaging and seamless social commerce experience that makes it easy for users to convert to a sale. What does that mean for your business?

• Prioritize short-form video. Whether we’re talking TikTok or Reels on Instagram and Facebook, audiences are turning to short-form video not only for entertainment but also for information – and that includes organic and paid ads. Users spend five times longer looking at a video ad than a static one, and Facebook video ads on average have a lower CPC at $1.86. 
• Create engaging, native-feeling ads. It’s not enough to just put out a quick video and hope for the best. Users prefer native ads that don’t break the flow of their experience of their feeds and instead seem like organic content. Your business can take this one step further by creating authentic, immersive, and interactive augmented reality ads. These ads instruct users who click on them on how to interact with the ad and offer users an opportunity to experience your product or service. 
• Optimize for AI recommendations. TikTok has created user expectations for relevant AI-selected content based on their in-app habits. In 2023, we expect that AI-recommended posts will infiltrate Facebook feeds, and the push for more content from Pages and people that you don’t follow will give Facebook a much-needed boost. 
• Engage with customers via DMs. Brand engagement via direct messages continues to rise, and Meta is looking to feature more tools to help brands tap into this shift. Meta recently highlighted the growth in Click-To-Message ads across Messenger and WhatsApp. In 2023, marketers should expect additional ad options that align with this new form of engagement.

Take Advantage of Trends…. 

NetElixir’s trend researchers have a few ideas of what design trends we can expect in 2023:

• The retro trend will continue strong, so if it suits your brand, consider using subtle cues to the 90s and other relevant decades in your designs, including colors and fonts. 
• We’re seeing more use of realistic-looking photography that doesn’t look overproduced, as it helps brands connect with their customers on a human level. 
• Gradients will still be big in 2023, with liquid-looking gradients adding another level to this visually appealing style.
• Tap into the coming metaverse by adopting or creating the sci-fi-augmented, futuristic reality feel that comes with avatars.
• Grab attention with cinemagraphs, still photographs stitched together as a video clip or animated GIF to show very subtle movement.

…But Stay True to Your Brand

From design to strategy, brand authenticity is important to your customers. If your brand tone relates to a current trend, do make the most of it – but don’t force it. Your brand will draw attention by presenting a consistent identity that customers connect with and remember.

Leading with your brand’s values and staying true to them will continue to position your business for success. In 2022, companies like United Airlines, Keystone Light, and Miller Lite tapped into their identities and values to promote on-topic messaging that draws attention to their brand: remember UA’s commitment to carbon neutrality and other environmentally-friendly stances, Keystone Light’s focus on their rural customers’ sense of community and self-sufficiency, and Miller Lite’s emphasis on Americana. In 2023, consider how your brand can explore its own values in ways that capture the interest of potential customers. 

Work with NetElixir

Whatever your plans for 2023, NetElixir can help your business develop a digital marketing strategy that will resonate with current customers and connect with new ones. From web development to prepare for the cookieless future and make your e-commerce site more mobile-friendly, to SEO and thoughtful content creation, to engagement with trends, NetElixir’s team of experts will work with you to frame a strategy for success in the new year and beyond.  

Additional Resources

• Crafting an Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy
• How to Optimize Your Website With The Latest Digital Marketing Trends
• Recent Changes In Google Search Console

The post NetElixir’s Insights and Trends for 2023 appeared first on NetElixir.

While crafting an effective social media strategy means getting your brand into the public’s awareness, how you tell your brand story is crucial to maintaining a relationship with your customers. Being authentic and humanizing your brand is how you make your brand story memorable, engaging, and yours. 

Tenents of Authenticity In Your Social Media Approach

Authenticity is key to customers trusting your brand. Brands are competing on the idea of who can be the most authentic. No one is going to win that award — for one, it doesn’t exist, and two, that level of competition can cause brands to misrepresent themselves in the effort of appearing authentic. Authenticity comes from being genuine so stop overthinking and actually just be real.

Be Transparent

There is no room for gimmicks. People believe brands have a responsibility to be transparent. In fact, businesses are the most trusted institution, according to the 2021 Edelman Trust Barometer, surpassing NGOs, the government, and the media. Maintaining that level of trust with consumers means being transparent about your brand’s values, missions, company culture, product, sustainability efforts, and more. 

Be Honest

Authenticity is not a fake it until you make it gig, so don’t try to fake it. Not everything has to be perfect. Let your humanity show through silly and unfiltered photos. Don’t over-edit or photoshop your images and products to appear as something they are not.

If you don’t have a DTC site, then tell consumers where they can go to buy your products. A lot of brands try to work around this and it only causes more confusion. And if your customers are confused, they’re unlikely to return to your brand. Ensure your product descriptions and company information are all correct and up-to-date so consumers know what they are investing in.

Be Empathetic

Consumers expect brands to have a voice that speaks on bigger social issues and topics. This means being inclusive and aware of what’s happening around the world, as well as understanding the issues that are relevant to your customers. While customers’ social consciousness was rising, the pandemic helped cement socially conscious shoppers as a significant portion of the new pandemic personas. According to Businesswire, 70% of consumers want to know what brands are doing to address social and environmental issues. 

Be careful, however, to not jump on the social cause bandwagon just because. These socially conscious shoppers are not interested in patronizing brands that engage in lip service or performative allyship on important days that have been reduced to a hashtag. Make sure your internal team thoroughly understands the social cause(s) your brand is claiming to stand for. And make sure your brand’s actions and values support what you post as well. 

Be Open

Take ownership of any mistakes or errors you make; after all, you are only human. If you made a mistake, apologize; if there’s a delay in orders or shipment, update your customers; if a product misses the mark, own up to it. 

Sometimes social media can be nice about your mistakes, like the rush of support of been there when an HBO Max intern sent out a test email. Openly apologize if needed — and make sure your apology is actually an apology. Don’t delete negative comments, but address them head-on. Be professional in all your responses.

Be Consistent

Consistency matters, both in terms of scheduling so your brand is reliable, but in messaging and how you present yourself. This means making sure your content fits the reality of your brand’s values, mission, culture, and goals. Maintain a consistent brand voice and experience so customers trust you and follow you across platforms.

Conclusion

Brands have to find a balance. While they need to demonstrate empathy, inclusivity, and awareness, they also need to not be tone-deaf to current social crises or performative. This list is nowhere near exhaustive and each brand has to find a social media strategy that aligns with who they are and what message they want to send.

The point of social media is to have fun and connect with people, so humanizing your brand can help you tell your story, authentically and genuinely. As such, authenticity boils down to being yourself; your brand has a lot of unique products to share and truly interesting employees that make magic happen every day. Social media helps you engage with your followers on their time and platform of choice, so truly connect with them. Share your story and welcome them along on the journey. 

Further Insights on Connecting with Your Customers

• Insights into the DTC E-Commerce Explosion 
• SEO Strategy to Responsibly Engage Your Customers
• Repeat Customer Prediction of New E-Commerce Customers
• Emotions in Superbowl Ads

The post How to Be Authentic in Your Social Media Strategy appeared first on NetElixir.

So, let’s get social! NetElixir’s social team shared insights into the latest social media trends and tips on how to best implement those trends into your social media marketing strategy. 

The Social Media Market

The social media market is constantly growing. According to eMarketer, social ad spending is set to increase 21% to reach $49B in 2021. For a breakdown of the anticipated growth for specific channels, see below:

While Facebook and Instagram have dominated the market for several years (especially in the United States), platforms like Snapchat and Pinterest are gaining active users.

Pinterest, for example, has always been a market leader for inspiration. According to SproutSocial, 89% of Pinners use the platform for purchase inspiration and 85% of users have bought something based on Pins. Last year, Pinterest improved the platform’s overall ad offering, added integrated shopping ads, and launched a shoppable feature, making it more than just a source of inspiration.

Snapchat’s augmented reality features make the channel unique and helps it resonate with younger users, as over 75% of Snapchatters use the AR feature.

Of course, we can’t forget TikTok. TikTok is projected to reach one out of every 4 internet users in the United States by the end of 2021, according to eMarketer. 

“If you [as a brand] are talking to your customers online, then they are most likely on TikTok,” Manish summarizes. 

Teenagers predominantly favor TikTok and Instagram. As more people actively join social media, brands need to meet their consumers where they are to create a winning social media marketing strategy. 

“Social Media has been quite an interesting space during the pandemic, with a lot of consumers moving online and discovering new brands that they can shop from. Social media played an integral role in all of this.” – Manish Mohan, Senior Direct of Digital Strategy

Improve your brand’s social presence with these five social media trends:

5 Social Media Trends Brands Should Know in 2021

1. Be Real

Authenticity helps drive loyalty. If your customers resonate with who you really are as a brand, then they will be inclined to stay with you. Transparency in values and missions, honesty and integrity, and an openness to connect with your customers as people and not just buyers help establish an authentic brand identity. The importance of authenticity as a social media trend cannot be denied: 90% of consumers said authenticity is a deciding factor in choosing which brands they like and support.

Create authenticity by going back to your roots, your brand’s core values, and what you stand for, Zara Asad, our Social Media Senior Analyst, shares. Build authority and expertise in your industry by sharing your know-hows and tips without being too salesy. Share your journey. In turn, others will share your brand among their peers. Expertise, peer-recommendations, and shares will cultivate your brands open and authentic identity. 

Be everywhere your customers are so you can be there to answer their questions and thoughtfully engage with them without putting them too far out of their comfort zone. Build and foster a positive community around your brand with factual information. Don’t be misleading or click-baity; this decreases customers’ trust in both social media platforms and your brand specifically.

Expect criticism with an online social presence. Deal with criticism proactively and apologize when you need to. Conversely, accept praise when due as well. How you react to both negative and positive feedback will help develop your brand’s voice and how you interact with customers. 

2. (Almost) Every Customer Can Be An Influencer

While professional influencers can greatly help your brand grow and get attention, your loyal customer base are potential brand ambassadors because they are already engaged with your brand. They may only have 200 followers, but peer recommendations go a long way: over 80% of people say they’re influenced by what their friends share on social media.

Influencer engagement should be authentic as well. Take time to engage with influencers, even before signing them, so their followers have a chance to get acquainted with your brand. Additionally, this gives you time to vet the influencer to ensure they are someone you want to connect with personally. 

As Jennifer Altema, our influencer guru says, “Followers these days can sniff out a shallow campaign a mile away.”

Look carefully within your user base for potential micro-influencers. Maybe add an option during checkout or in a post-checkout survey for a returning customer to share their social profile and then periodically check their follower count and engagement. Consider the following steps:

• Outline your collaboration details ahead of time. Have a contract ready to go – but offer a lean, bulleted, neat contract so you don’t immediately overwhelm them.
• Know your brand’s dos and don’ts on influencer relationships, such as don’t mention a competitor and do include brand colors.
• Give your influencer room to be creative as they know what content best resonates with their audience. Their promotions are highly curated to their audience.
• Be prepared to pay micro-influencers.
• First impressions are important, especially with products. Consider the whole package; don’t just ship a product, but an experience.

By creating an experience around your product, you can ask an influencer for a social livestream. Shoppable livestreams are the modern generations’ QVC, as Jennifer says. 

Influencer content should supplement your overall social media content strategy.

3. Leverage the Social Network

You need to have a cross-channel strategy to amplify your brand reach across all social channels, especially as they are growing.

Each channel has their own strengths and strong following in certain demographics. Don’t just split your paid media budget across five channels to maximize exposure; curate a social media strategy that leverages the social network in appropriate relation to your target audience. Look where your customers are and what platform they use most. You can’t be everywhere, Zara says. “Pick two platforms that you can really master and then branch out,” Zara recommends.

For example, your target audience may be aged 25-35 years. While reaching that specific age demographic on Facebook and Instagram, consider allocating a small budget to testing on Snapchat and TikTok to start getting a younger demographic familiar with your brand. When they come of age, they already may have started engaging with you. Develop discovery and outreach strategies for channel-agnostic and channel-specific audiences, optimizing for each platform and each customer profile on each platform.

Additionally, you need to be able to measure the success of each channel. NetElixir’s proprietary technology, LXRInsights, tracks every customer touch point and builds out your customers’ purchase journey. 

4. Don’t Let Measurement Curtail Your Social Goals

The contribution of social media in your overall distribution strategy is only increasing.

Work to develop models to understand the correlation between incremental volume on social media of reach and conversions to revenue gained. It is not a linear correlation. For example, devise a model that says for every 2% increase in reach and impressions, your brand has a 0.5% lift in revenue. While this is not a given, it will help scale your social media contributions. Connect social media hits to your owned and earned media. How does an incremental lift in social media related to organic and website traffic? 

Prioritize cleaning up, segmenting, and mapping your first party data. This can go a long way to retargeting and retaining customers through strategic social media marketing campaigns and help you engage new customers on different social platforms. 

5. Serendipitous Discovery with Social Commerce

Other forms of paid media rely on consumer intent. Social media, on the other hand, champions serendipitous discovery and can get your brand in front of customers who are not actively searching for your brand.

Social commerce as a channel has been rapidly evolving, along with everything else in the digital sphere. According to eMarketer, more U.S. consumers are willing to shop directly from a social media platform. Activating social selling will help you navigate the cookieless digital world. Social platforms are essentially walled gardens, Manish explains, as when someone shops within Facebook Shops, that data lives within Facebook. 

Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest Shops are the top three social commerce channels. If your customers are already active on these channels, consider implementing these shops into your e-commerce strategy.

Your Organic and Paid Social Media Strategy

Over half of consumers research a business on the internet – including on their social media profiles – before buying. You want to make sure you’re making a positive impression on any potential customers that may be evaluating your company.

Organic and paid social media work together to successfully strengthen your brand’s online presence. When users see an advertisement on social media, the next step is usually to visit the brand’s profile. Without a strong organic presence, you could be missing that conversion because the customer in question cannot fully engage with your brand prior to purchasing. Ads are temporary; your organic social content is how customers grow with your brand.

For more detail into these five social media trends, watch our Emerging Paid Social Trends for Retailers webinar. 

A marketing strategy operates best with a strong foundation to rely on. Get deeper insights into the nuances of different social media channels and learn how to develop your brand voice and audience by downloading our ebook, 10 Best Practices for Organic Social Media. 

Further Reading:

• 9 Search, Social, and Amazon Trends for 2021
• Forget Brand Content; Say Hello to Influencer-Generated Content
• Facebook Shops: A New Digital Storefront

The post Social Media Trends for 2021 and Beyond appeared first on NetElixir.