"By 2020, more people will have mobile phones than running water or electricity at home. And for the first time in history, more people will be connected to the internet than those who are not. Mobile will generate nearly half of US e-commerce sales and millennials will make up half the global workforce." 1
That's right Susan. And did you know that users access Facebook and Instagram at least eight times daily, while scrolling about 30 meters/100 feet per session? Not sure if that's suppose to excite or scare to be honest. Anyway, another busy year has passed and it's time to wrap up 2019 on Facebook and Instagram and look at what's coming 2020. Before we go talk more about your marketing mindset, strategies and tactics for 2020 - let's have a look at the most important Facebook and Instagram updates from 2019.
On the product side of things, the updates were flowing across the platforms month to month with everything from better shopping experiences, branded content, hiding likes to new AR functionality and cooler ad creative templates. Facebook has definitely earned its spot at the top - with more daily visitors than any other social media platform.
("What a beautiful timeline". Oh, thank you. 🤓)
It's crazy how fast we adapt to these updates, it's like they've been around forever. But sometimes we need to remind ourselves that it wasn't that long ago that your parents destroyed your life by picking up the phone at home and thereby disconnecting you to the Internet. Brings back some good old memories 'eh? 😄
Enough of the memory lane already, let's discuss six things to keep in mind for making the most out of your social media marketing 2020:
- Gender and age is becoming irrelevant:
We are entering a new shift where advertisers need to re-think and widen their target demographics as well as their value proposition since gender and age is becoming irrelevant. Use a new kind of spokespeople and try to adopt a more age/gender neutral approach during product development and campaign creation.
- The world is your market:
Sounds like something an evil Bond villain would say, but the online world doesn't have borders so it's actually pretty accurate. So what you'd want to do is to experiment and utilize the global arena and find your growth beyond physical borders. More than 1 billion people on Facebook are connected to a business abroad. Many of those people are also online shoppers, and 2 out of 3 online shoppers have already shopped cross border at some point up until now. - Video will (still) dominate:
Video is by far the most engaging format and there's no surprise that 82% of all online content will be video in the upcoming years. And when you're making videos, remember these golden rules:
- Design for sound off - delight with sound on: To put it in a simple context; don't deliver your value prop in a voiceover without subtitles. For those who're actually consuming your content with sound on; make sure to delight with a nice tune or sound effects as it activates another sense of the consumer related to your content. Â
- Optimize for mobile (and definitely for Stories): Everyone does everything on their mobile device. Why shouldn't you?
- Showcase your brand early and often: Book ending is also recommended, meaning showing your logo quickly in the absolute beginning and end.
- Be short and sweet: Never longer than 15 sec, more like 6-8 sec. Adapt to the formats where you advertise and remember that people have no attention today, which is a perfect bridge to...
- ...Capture attention: Showcase your most eye-catching piece first, reverse the classic narrative we learn from movies. If you wait with your BANG-piece until the end, 90% or so have already opted out. You have about 1.7 seconds to catch the attention of a prospect scrolling their phone. - Technological adaptation:
2020 will see a vast rise in this area. We're already touching upon it with AR and VR and it will expand in 2020, since users demand better and more engaging experiences everyday. These types of technologies can make that happen. Be aware of updates and be prepared if any of these formats becomes available for your business (like what just happened to AR recently, where some brands acted fast). When given the chance, utilize on it quickly - the window of opportunity will be very short. - Copy, copy, copy:
Having read up on hours and hours of articles, blog posts, bibles, e-books, tweets and status updates about growth I feel confident enough to let you in on the number 1 Holy Grail-ish truth about the secret sauce of growth. And as the section title implies; it's the art of copywriting, because basically everything comes down to it. Right about here you can go ahead and visualize your business' internal ecosystem in which you'll discover that copywriting is the core and DNA of everything. Invest heavily in this, you won't be sorry! - Save time (and therefor money)
We ourselves are Facebook Marketing Partners and Instagram Partners and what we get from Facebook when it comes to insights is invaluable. That's why we're going to share some insights with you as a little gift, because you've managed to get this far! So here it goes; the majority of partners to Facebook are tools or platforms that automate and/or optimize campaign management for advertisers. Facebook themselves barely knows one partner from another when it comes to automations or optimizations of campaigns, because everyone is doing it. What does this tell you? Well, that the demand is enourmous because the time you actually save while letting machine learning or AI take decisions for you instead of trusting your gut - is just as the demand, enourmous. And those decisions are taken 24/7 no matter what, so you will never lose any business opportunities, and definitely not outside your office hours or your timezone. If you aren't using any tool or platform for this, better start researching because this is a game changer!
In summary
If you've gotten this far; awesome! Hopefully you've picked up on a couple of things along the way. 2020 is coming fast and we all want a piece of it. By applying the most relevant and impactful pieces of this content; your business will have a pretty good shot at taking a larger chunk of your target market than competitors acting on their gut. Â