SXTC Global Brand Consulting’s DYADICA Sees Social Media Rapidly Changing And Losing Ground For Consumer Shopping

Despite all of the wonderful tools the ability to sell products on Facebook or any social media is waning for many brands, manufacturers and their categories.

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, May 11, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ -- The global media markets are noting significant challenges regarding social media and how this vehicle seems to be under attack whether it be regarding a gamut of social problems, bullying, misinformation, societal degradation, or simply negative messages that it has been propagating in vast amounts for years. For marketers, the evolution of media is a natural thing as people, social norms, and even cultures change as does the media that services, propagates, and surrounds them. Social media is no exception to this rule. Agencies and consultants that work with brands to propagate their messages have noticed that social media particularly has undergone drastic changes over the last 48 months— and not resulting just from the COVID pandemic. The source is much more complex and permanent coming from cultural and societal behaviors that have been rapidly shifting, especially regarding consumerism.

Once a powerful platform to reach consumers to elicit purchases either indirectly (or in more recent years directly), Facebook and Instagram are now seen not so much as shopping opportunity channels but instead as more of social platforms to share opinions that usually do not result in sales from expensive “boosted” posts and backend social media campaigns by consumer Marketers and their brands. Despite the multitude of wonderful and ingenious tools in Facebook and Instagram, such as look-alike audiences, boosted and product tagged posts, complex geo-demo-lifestyle targeting, and branded stores, the ability to sell products on Facebook or any social media is waning for many brands, manufacturers and their categories. Buy why?

“From about 10 years ago, or firm advised our consumer goods/FMCG and lifestyle clients that social media channels will never be an all-powerful selling venue, but rather more of an “added influencer” that allows people to share brands (and more importantly their thoughts on brands and products) they like with people that they know who share similar opinions and trust… this literally makes recommendations to these groups whether to purchase the product or service or not. Ultimately, that decision comes from the individual and not the technology or even the directness that the technology allows for,” says Brand Director Stefan Paul of SXTC-DYADICA Global Brand Consulting. “Too many consumer brands and inexperienced digital marketers made the grave mistake of overestimating the power of social media to illicit purchase. It is reminiscent of the early 2000’s when digital marketers believed that the internet was “THE ONLY” channel to sell from and that BAMS would go the way of the dinosaur… literally, its own world and not simply another channel amongst many. This was a huge mistake and wiped out or seriously damaged many a brand 20 years ago. To sell technology is a far different ball game than selling personal consumer goods or lifestyle products, and there is a certain deep expertise in brand strategy and consumer behavior that is required to understand the use, potential, and application of any type of new technology that allows you to reach consumers. Failing to appreciate this reality has time and time again proven to be devastating for marketers and brands,” he says.

“DYADICA have always advocated to our clients a very carefully chosen media communications approach that uses channels the way an artist would use colors and paints... One carefully selects and uses some colors for one aspect of a painting and others for other aspects— carefully synergistically blending them together. This allows a brand to give an encompassing marketing and brand building effort that reaches consumers across diverse learning, engagement and reinforcement vehicles. For example, for clothing products you might find that Facebook and Instagram allow you to reinforce the visuals, usage situations, dialogue and social recommendations for your brand and products but may not elicit purchasing. Whereas a much more direct route to purchasing would possibly be a Google keyword search where consumers are actually searching for products via the keywords that show the intent they are looking to purchase...

“Nike shoes on sale” or “cheapest price for a Chevy Camaro” or “Adidas shoe sales in my area” or “cheapest florists in my area”, etc. It usually is not a matter of a single channel or platform serving the entire needs of a brand communications campaign to elicit purchasing but instead the strategic usage and integration of ALL of these channels together that makes the difference. We usually find that some channels are used for purchasing, others are used for education, others are used for reinforcement, and others are simply used to get consumer attention and drive them to other vehicles that are more designed to elicit purchases which usually involves a dedicated, purchase-driven company website or retailers/resellers such as Amazon.”

Social media by itself will not do a lot for you other than help build a reputation and simply reinforce aspects of a brand such as visuals and tonality but only if done correctly. To generate sales, you need a much more integrated approach. “Our company SXTC Global Brand Consulting, for instance, was one of the very first in the world to use social media including blogs back 15 years ago. In fact, our blog called “BrandXtra” was one of the most comprehensive places to learn, get educated and informed, discuss and share aspects of brand strategy and brand building long before Interbrand’s BrandChannel. We had a supply of major newspapers, magazines, reporters, and industry experts who visited BrandXtra. However, by far, the most visitations didn’t come from potential client brands but from students looking for internships, industry people looking for jobs, those doing research for academic papers, competitor agencies looking to snoop or up their skillsets, or simply brand hobbyists that wanted to comment and give their opinions about what looked good and what didn't look good from our client projects. Despite putting large sums of money, resources, and years into the project, it never resulted in any type of significant sales which is the same result as literally every other major agency-based social media effort. A valuable lesson was learned which I am sure many other agencies and consultants did at the time and are still learning: a social place to meet, comment and talk, despite how targeted or impressive it is, doesn’t always end up in sales. You need much more,” says Stefan.

With constantly new social media platforms entering the market such as TikTok and Japan's LINE as examples, and the cost of entry relentlessly decreasing, we are now seeing a hyper-segmentation of the social media provider market which means that social media platforms will become ever-so-more specialized towards certain groups and interests— splintering the social media market, itself. This has tremendous implications for marketers and communications experts that want to advertise and promote their brands on these platforms. “It reminds me of 15 years ago regarding the blog world when advertisers were so excited about blogs because it allowed two-way communications between brands and consumers for the first time— at least in an easy mode. It also allowed brands to educate consumers on product usage and reasons to prefer one product over another as well as build corporate reputation. The problem arose when mass technology providers came into the market allowing anyone to put a blog up almost instantly which flooded the search engines with billions of junk messages daily that were getting botted and ranked— people like Google were not happy and started to put the brakes on posts being ranked and shared over the search engines. The other thing that happened was that blogs simply became flooded with too much useless content that people didn't want to read, so they became a waste of time for most people who simply wanted to purchase from a trusted seller as easily and quickly as possible without the clutter of junk. Blogs also couldn't build a direct sense of community by allowing sharing in real time the way one can let's say on Facebook. So, the blogs very quickly went the way of the dinosaur despite the fact one very good feature about them was that they could help rank a website with all the keywords and content they were providing. They also provided another interstitial point in a seemingly endless cyber world where brands can easily get lost.

Enter Facebook, which for the first time allowed literally real-time interaction between brands and their customers and between customers themselves—truly exciting stuff. But, the promises of transparency and instant communications have slowly eroded as brands now take often days to reply to posts and messages. However, with the social media market now being hyper-segmented by in-market, small and local platform providers, we will eventually come to a point where there will literally be dozens if not hundreds of these platforms that reach specialized audiences. Say, for example, a social media platform for those who like fishing, or figure skating, or golf, religious affiliation, or as we have been seeing for the last years political orientation. This will require careful strategies of how to select, use, integrate with other media, and ultimately what to expect from social media platforms.” says Stefan.

For now, the best advice to build sales and brand is to painstakingly build a strategy based on careful research of customers and which media vehicles will do what for a brand in terms of ROI as well as intangibles thus defining expectations from each vehicle individually as well as cumulatively. “Basically, find out how each platform works by itself and combined— can they effectively be integrated to generate purchase synergy, ROI, and intangibles… and if so in what proportions?” says Stefan. “So you may find a mix of Google search combined with targeted PR ads in physical magazines, online magazines or specialist publications and integrate these with your social media profile for social reinforcement and education with a link to direct purchase (your website, reseller or Amazon). The best advice is also to remember that in marketing and brand building things never stay the same for very long, except of course regarding the cornerstones of brand identity and strategy which rarely ever change.”

DYADICA-SXTC Global Brand Consulting started in 1973 as a creative and design agency working with some of the world's biggest brands headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri including Anheuser-Busch/Budweiser, Purina, Energizer, Snapple, Craftsman, Emerson, SEARS, etc. Over the decades, it has transformed into a global front-line strategic, brand and brand management provider including brand and marketing strategy, complete 360-degree brand building including Creative & Design, in-house/onsite client brand management, Marketing and Digital. It has grown to over 5000 client engagements across hundreds of clients (from start-ups to Fortune 100 brands to nation brands) around the globe through offices in North America, Asia and the EMEA.

DYADICA-SXTC Global Brand Consulting has decades of leading worldwide brand ideation through books, white papers, and articles that have changed the way brands think and operate with its works published in some of the world's best-known journals and newspapers, quoted in ideation-leading books, taught in leading business schools and agency training programs.

Robert Sharm, Corporate Communications. roberts@sxtcworld.com
Website www.dyadica.co
Robert Sharm
Dyadica & Co

Robert Sharm
SXTC-DYADICA Global Brand Consulting
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