It is a question that is asked in 100% of the Business Acumen training programs conducted by
Advantexe and it never fails to be a provocative conversation in our business simulation debriefings, “Did our investments in social media marketing really work, or is it just the latest fad?”
Over the past few months, I have traveled around the world delivering high-profile business acumen programs to the future leaders of large organizations and I continue to see a trend of a lack of awareness about the impact of social media marketing that is startling.
I’m astounded every time I answer participant questions that yes, indeed, the cumulative investments they’ve made in their social media marketing strategies will pay off in terms of better awareness, stronger brand equity, and ultimately increased revenues and profits.
According to Kepios, there are now 4.95 billion social media users around the world in October 2023, equating to 61.4 percent of the total global population. Social media user numbers have continued to grow over the past 12 months with 215 million new users joining social media since this time last year.
If you do the math, that is an annual growth rate of 4.5% and 7 new users every second of the day around the world.
From a business acumen perspective, large organizations that haven’t fully embraced it are going to find themselves so far behind their competitors who have that they may never recover.
What Does Execution Look Like
In one of my sessions, we had a senior level Marketing professional share that she had completely overhauled their entire marketing strategy and budgeting process. It was also something she tried in her simulation workshop with great success as well.
According to Gartner, more than 50% of the Chief Marketing Officers they surveyed said they were going to dramatically shift their spending away from traditional advertising and more toward social media. This new spending includes TikTok and advertising on streaming services.
One of our participants shared an interesting perspective on his brand’s shift in strategy, “What we are doing today completely inverted from what we were doing 10 years ago where our marketing vision was to position the brand value to our targeted customers and try to get the biggest, most scalable bang for the buck we could. And quite honestly it was hit or miss with no real ability to make or measure an impact unless you were pouring hundreds of millions of dollars on the same old tired campaigns. Now, our most impactful and effective strategies are to connect with authentic influencers who then drive brand awareness to smaller communities but literally overnight. What used to take 3-6 months to make an impact can now only take 3-6 weeks.
And this approach is not just limited to the US where currently only 4.1% of online sales are driven by social media marketing, as a matter of fact, it is more mature and thriving at an even higher level outside of the US in places like China where by 2025 more than 17% of all online sales will be driven by social media.
In Summary, too many successful companies are falling behind in social media marketing. I heard it loud and clear over the past few weeks. The data is clear from the real world and from the simulated world of business acumen training that social media marketing is going to be the critical driver for immediate and future success.
