The annual report by the Worldwide Business Research (WBR) Insights team & has dropped; Global Social Advertising Trends in 2021: How Brands Are Adapting to Disruption and Changing Consumer Habits.
Read on for our recap on the key insights and important social advertising trends from this years report.
“Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers shifted rapidly to digital channels as brick and mortar stores closed their doors for safety purposes. This signaled a massive deployment of digital assets by retail companies, including spending on advertising.”
It’s not a new concept, we already know that the movement to online for retailers has been growing rapidly over the last 10 years, especially in the world of social advertising – also known as social media marketing (SMM).
From a world where online shopping was generally non-existent – to 2021 – where companies like Amazon have had their largest year of revenue growth in history.
Key Findings:
Facebook Ads still remains King.
Though we must say, with the recent release of Apple’s iOS 14 and it’s new privacy and tracking conundrum, we’re wondering how much longer Facebook is going to be able to hold their reign.
Still, like all platforms and channels, Facebook will still have an incredibly important role in a businesses overall online digital ecosystem. And we also don’t see the drop from 93% of businesses currently using social media ads coming any time soon.
The report states however that though only slightly, company advertising budgets for social media marketing (SMM) are still increasing year by year. It was found that 62% of organisations still spend between 31% and 50% of their total marketing budget on social media advertising like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This is up from 53% of organisations spending between 26% and 50% on SMM.
But Instagram took the win for Best ROAS.
Almost half of the respondents to this year’s survey (42%) say they see the best return on ad spend (ROAS) from Instagram. That’s compared to just 21% in 2019.
Although only 56% of last year’s respondents said they buy ads on the platform, 90% of the retailers surveyed this year use it.
So, how do I allocate my Ad Spend?
76% of the respondents say their organizations will increase their ad spending on Facebook. Though identified as the best for ROAS, only 38% of organizations plan to increase spending on Instagram while 24% plan to decrease spending, despite its title.
The difference though is that the majority of e-commerce or online retailers are looking to increase on Instagram.
“Retail Brands Still Struggle with Manual Processes and Lack of Automation”
Now THIS is concerning! At Sydney Digital Marketing, we PREACH and SCREAM automations! It’s the ‘way of the future’ but it doesn’t have to be so much future, it can be now!
Platforms like HubSpot and HootSuite have paved the way for marketing-specific automations for B2B and B2C customers, and all of our clients have benefited from their automations to save them time and money AND provide their customers with an incredible customer experience, or as we like to call it at SDM; Digital Customer Experience.
Between 2019 and 2020, researchers asked whether organisations were still struggling with manual processes in the creation and delivery of advertising campaigns. This number increased dramatically from 61% to 72%. This is indicative of the increasing complexity of digital marketing.
Though brands are more open to automations (67% of them to be exact), currently only 87% of respondents don’t currently use automation technology.
2021 says bring on marketing automation!
Businesses have a huge opportunity to be able to free up their resources with the use of automating their marketing and social advertising. The benefits of automation include:
Success is still all about Team Collaboration.
Though we preach automations (as they’re all the rage in our field!), the 2021 Worldwide Business Research Insights report speaks about fostering collaboration between creative teams is going to be essential for their business and marketing strategy moving forward.
By bringing teams together, organisations have the potential to generate marketing tactics and strategies that speak to their individual customer segments on a personal level, therefore increasing ROAS and generating more sales.
The report stated; “At 56%, most organizations plan to encourage their social media advertising and creative teams to work together more closely in the future. This is the only plan that a majority of respondents are dedicated to.” Last year, only 51% said they were prioritising this!
Some more team-building stats from the report;
2021/21 Goals Include:
Our 3 Top Tips For You.
Thanks for reading our recap, you can read the full report here. And in the meantime, keep your eye out for the next Worldwide Business Research Insights report on Global Social Advertising Trends in the coming years.
And if you’re looking to partner with an agency who lives and breathes Social Media Marketing and Marketing Automations, reach out!
We’d love to hear from you!
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