Social media has evolved from being an optional add-on to a fundamental component of modern marketing. The recent announcement from Unilever to allocate 50% of its media budget to social channels highlights this shift. However, a significant gap still exists between strategy in social media marketing - and execution.
For social media to truly transform a brand’s business, marketers need to merge big-picture strategy with social-first execution; yet few have properly cracked how to deliver this consistently. Why is this the case?
The problems are organisational, creative and strategic.
Organisational Issues:
Responsibility for social media is often fragmented across different agencies, which are, typically, also fractured internally. Internal client silos exist too: social media responsibility and oversight is commonly spread across different internal teams and separate budget allocations.
Creative and content challenges:
As brands shift their attention from traditional media to social (Deloitte recently reported 56% of Gen Z and 43% of millennials find social media content "more relevant than traditional TV and movies"), lots of poor branded content over time has created an anti-ad environment, with many brands opting to disrupt the social media experience instead of enhancing it.
Talent and strategic shortcomings:
Brands struggle to find the appropriate talent that can balance brand-building expertise with the required understanding of social platforms and trends. There is also now a danger of falling into a “social-first” trap when it comes to future brand building.
Let’s unpack the organisational part
Responsibility for planning and executing social media content for brands can rest in a number of different places. Brands have many options to choose from when it comes to outsourcing help for their social media business.
Most brands start by balancing the outsourcing of tactical “help” with internal “ownership”. Typically, some form of in-house HQ team “owns” social media and seeks external “tactical” help from specialist agencies with specific key benefits that promise to do it all. In reality, all face their own challenges.
How many of these following stereotypical (and anecdotal) scenarios sound familiar?...
The in-house social team which understands the brand and target audience inside out and cuts through red tape. However, it often innovates slowly, it can struggle with big-budget campaigns and it may be isolated from new thinking and industry changes.
A traditional ad agency which provides excellent big-picture thinking but is way too expensive, it struggles with social-first execution and it prioritises other media. Social concepts can appear as an afterthought - usually just the TV commercial executions adapted for social platforms and presented on slide #268 of the 300-slide presentation.
An agency with ‘social’ in their name which understands social platforms and the wider landscape completely but is largely disconnected from any broader brand thinking and planning. Its content output might be entertaining but can often drift off-message.
A media buying agency which excels at social ad buying and performance ads but often relies on outdated effectiveness principles. This results in formulaic approaches, like forcing a logo placement in the first second to game brand recall metrics.
Hopefully, the above anecdotal examples help show how fragmented social media support has become, with many brands exacerbating the problem by dividing social media responsibilities among these different specialists— assigning influencer contracting to PR agencies, for example, or retraining customer service teams to handle community management. This approach is expensive and problematic, especially if they don't collaborate effectively.
Even within specialist agencies, more problems exist. 北京赛车pk10 or “big idea” thinking and the more trend-driven “everyday” content creation responsibilities are often split across different departments. While these require different skillsets, this separation creates disconnection.
Client-side, the social responsibility is fragmented across different departments too, with customer service teams often responsible for community management and different teams for organic and performance marketing, along with separate creative and media budging. Often, they all have contrasting objectives.
The fractured organisational approach to social media results in a disrupted audience experience and general apathy for social ads. In the very worst cases, it can erode brand equity instead of building it.
Next: the creative & content challenges
Sadly, most brands create content that audiences simply don’t want to see on social media. Flooding platforms with “digital landfill” has created an environment where people feel bombarded by social ads and skip anything that looks too polished. This trend is reflected in the rise of paid subscription services to remove social ads, extremely short view times and poor engagement with branded social content.
There are several factors as to why. They deserve a separate article of their own but for today’s purposes, here’s a snapshot.
The introduction of self-serve ad buying on social media has put the power of creating ads into the hands of anyone with a credit card, contributing to a sea of poor advertising.
At the same time, more experienced agencies have failed to treat social advertising differently to traditional advertising and are often still applying outdated creative principles to social media content.
In today’s interest-based, algorithm-driven social landscape, organic brand content can struggle to reach the “For You” feed completely and paid ads are quickly skipped.
Brands struggle to compete against the likes of Mr. Beast when everything in the feed is designed to entertain. Brands are in a fight for attention on social media and are up against everything, everywhere, all at once.
Finally: the strategic shortcomings and talent gap
As social media specialists, we need to teach brands and agencies how to approach social properly. It’s badly needed.
A critical element that’s missing from their understanding is around social’s marketing and commercial credibility; and the fact that social media can be readily aligned with tangible business objectives. Social is not simply about relying on vanity metrics to explain effectiveness, nor chasing trends and being purely tactical.
Upgrading social media from a mere engagement tool to a serious business-growth driver that sits alongside other important marketing levers requires a mindset-switch among brands and their partners. The evidence is there. All it takes is a new approach.
But, then, it does also require some additional expertise. Expertise in creating value for a brand at the same time as delivering entertainment that enhances people’s social media experience rather than merely disrupting it.
It’s a talent, alongside copywriting and art direction for social, that remains hard to find.
So can we bridge the social gap?
The good news is…a promising approach and a path to getting social media right is emerging.
It resembles a full-service agency model but it’s one which considers prioritising building the brand in social media first, where applicable, before considering other placements like TV or out-of-home advertising.
In this new model, perhaps social media takes the lead more frequently and then other media follow after? The winners of the future are likely to be able to build out from social media confidently, while still bringing the necessary expertise to deliver across other touchpoints too.
But, take heed: a “social-first” approach to all brand building is just as dangerous as the traditional “TV-first” stance. Media choices should depend on other marketing fundamentals before arriving at social as the tactical media priority. Indeed, many social agencies are considering dropping the term “social” from their agency names and expanding their services into more traditional media to grow their offering.
It’s time for brands to rethink their approach. To avoid agency support on social being a bolt-on, they need to think about it in combination with organic, campaign, influencer, strategy and paid media.
Here at Recipe, my team and I are eager to help shape how this happens. We’d like this 北京赛车pk10 Perspective to serve as a launch point for debate with chief marketing officers about what they need and want from external agency support.
Because bridging the disconnect between big-picture strategy and social-first execution is crucial for anyone who believes both brands and consumers deserve much better, more effective social media marketing.
James Treen is senior social media strategist at Recipe.