Social media marketing took a drastic turn in 2020 as the Coronavirus pandemic restricted people to remain indoors. Therefore, businesses had to switch to more social media activity as the business world experienced a shift in customer behavior. So what are some of the expected challenges of social media marketing in 2021?
Stay with me and let’s find out.
If you manage a business social media account, sometimes it feels overwhelming to gear your posts towards your target audience. Considering 2020’s trends, we wouldn’t want 2021 taking a toll on your business. Given the content overload, high competition, and several other challenges, it can be difficult for you to stand out. Many marketers have taken an alternative SEO approach by buying articles in bulk and optimizing them for search engines.
We have discussed the eight most common challenges you might experience in your digital marketing journey in 2021 and how to overcome them. Read on for marketing trends you need to know about in 2021 and beyond.
8 Major Challenges of Social Media Marketing In 2021
While it may sound easy, the success of marketing your business on social media is not guaranteed. The success of your marketing strategy is dependent on several factors. We have come up with a list of ten marketing challenges that most businesses encounter and how to get through them;
- Learning About Your Customers.
- Generating Qualified Leads.
- Managing Cash Flow.
- Creating Engaging Content.
- Complying With Privacy and Data-Sharing Regulations.
- Making Websites Accessible.
- Strategizing Mobile-First.
- Establishing an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy.
Learning About Your Customers
Who is your target audience? Understanding your customers and their needs is the backbone of your entire marketing strategy.
You can learn more about your customers through My Persona, an app from HubSpot that makes it easy to create a buyer persona. Also, you can create polls and surveys and let customers answer them through your social media pages.
Generating Qualified Leads
The success of your business depends on the leads you generate. In 2021, the business environment is more competitive since most service-based enterprises try to get more leads. While you can rely on paid ads such as Google, or Facebook ads, they are likely to cost more due to the rise in demand for their services
The best way to generate qualified leads and beat competition is by networking. You can network through social media platforms, for example- LinkedIn. Besides, you can also use video marketing to hold virtual conferences and webinars.
Always aim to offer your potential clients substantial value before expecting to close your sale. That way, you can beat and remain ahead of your competitors.
Managing Cash Flow
The Covid-19 pandemic led to people losing jobs, hence high unemployment rates. It resulted in a difficult economic time, which led to businesses suffering from cash flow issues.
During a difficult economic period, for example, 2020, your business will experience a cycle whereby the holidays become incredibly profitable, and your business does well. After the holidays, you might experience a long dry spell with little or no sales as customers reduce their spending. Thus, creating the need for a business owner to learn how to manage their cash flow.
As a business owner, you need to get lean and reduce expenditure on unnecessary expenses. Luckily, moving your business online will cut down on costs such as renting space. Already-established businesses with regular customers might adopt better money management skills such as invoice factoring to manage their cash flow better.
Creating engaging content
The need to create high-quality, informative content as a digital marketer cannot be emphasized enough. Customers will always be hungry for fresh, informative content that adds value and helps them find a solution to their problem.
In 2021, popular content will be short-form videos, Google, Facebook, Instagram stories, podcasts, and live-streaming content. Customers are embracing interactive content that gives them a chance to voice their opinions.
Complying with Privacy and Data Sharing Regulations
Rules will always be there, and if anything, they are bound to get more strict. A website can attract users from across the world. Therefore, you need to comply with any laws that cover your target audience.
As you comply with the regulations you are aware of, always ensure your website is transparent. Be transparent about data sharing, privacy, and its policies on cookies.
Making websites accessible
A significant challenge of social media marketing faced in 2021 is making their websites accessible to everyone. Your website should be accessible to people with hearing, visual, or any other impairments.
You can make the site accessible by adding texts to videos to ensure those with hearing impairments understand it. You can also take measures to make your site easy to access through Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). WAI offers comprehensive information regarding website accessibility.
Strategizing mobile-first
People are glued to their smartphones and are using their mobile devices to browse. Therefore, you need to strategize a mobile-first strategy to capture your target audience in the market.
Ensure your website is easy to access on different devices, not only PCs. Make the user-experience easy by making their online shopping a breeze- for instance, having an online cart where they can check their items and pay using their phones.
Establishing an omnichannel marketing strategy
As customers become more active in different social media channels, it is essential to come up with an omnichannel strategy. Unlike before, where you would focus on a single social media forum, you now need to diversify.
While you want to make it easy for your customers and followers to connect with you, you don’t need to have your presence everywhere. Identify where your audience is most active and focus on the channel.
The key is to ensure your target audience has a seamless experience from one channel to another. You can do this by adding a link to your website or social media while sharing emails.
Upcoming Social Media Marketing Trends In 2021
Social media is a major part of people’s daily routine. Most people are addicted to social media and start their day by checking their social media feeds even before getting out of bed. Given the high importance of social media, you can make your social media marketing successful if you stay abreast of the upcoming trends. These trends include;
Creating ephemeral content
Ephemeral content is content that remains available for a short period, usually some hours after which it disappears. Perfect examples include Snapchat and Instagram stories.
People have a short attention span, and their method of consuming content has significantly changed. That is why Instagram and Google stories have gained popularity. These stories are short, fun and engaging and give consumers a chance to scroll from one story to the next.
As a social media marketer, you can use this trend to your advantage. 64% of marketers have started using Instagram Stories. So should you.
Traditional social platforms are expected to continue performing well
Facebook and Instagram have been around for years. They dominate social media as being the most popular and largest platforms for a while. Over the years, other platforms have emerged and notably rose to fame. Nonetheless, these new platforms have expansion difficulty, and their rise is short-lived.
Let’s take the example of TikTok. It started in 2016 and gained popularity fast among the youth. TikTok fast became the most popular app in both the Android and Apple play store. However, despite its success, it has challenges with some countries such as India banning it.
Traditional social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram also have undergone some challenges issues as they face court charges. For example, in 2020 (to date), the Australian government is trying to charge the two platforms if they share any news obtained from news companies in Australia.
Despite these challenges, most businesses are willing to increase their social budgets on Facebook and Instagram in 2021. This information was obtained from a survey done by HootSuite.
60% of the respondents plan to increase their marketing budget on Instagram, 46% are willing to increase their marketing expenditure on Facebook. But only 14% of businesses intend to increase their budget marketing on TikTok.
Video content will dominate
This is the most engaging and fun type of content. It is expected to dominate social media whether short videos like Instagram stories or long-form videos like those on YouTube, video content is the future of digital marketing content.
A Cisco study shows that by 2022, 82% of content shared online will be in the form of videos. Therefore, any social media marketer needs to utilize video content to remain relevant on social media platforms.
If you haven’t begun incorporating videos, you can start by creating video stories for content as well as for advertisement purposes. Alternatively, you can add videos in your posts and any other content strategy you are using.
Tips on how to overcome The Social Media Challenges in 2021
We have discussed the eight common challenges you can expect in social media marketing in 2021 and how to overcome them. Besides staying vigilant to this information, as a marketer, you must always think two steps ahead.
Always keep up with the current marketing trends to beat the competition. Occasionally read the latest marketing reports to see what other social media marketers are doing to stay ahead of these trends and try them.
While digital marketing is not a walk in the park, with our solutions above, you can overcome any marketing challenges that come your way in 2021. Good luck!