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 * Overview
 * Social Marketing
   
    * MARKETING OVERVIEW
   
    * TREND 1: THE CREATOR TREND
   
    * TREND 2: THE ROI TREND
   
    * TREND 3: THE CONTENT TREND
   
   
 * Social Commerce
   
    * COMMERCE OVERVIEW
   
    * TREND 1: THE SHOPPING TREND
   
    * TREND 2: THE SEARCH TREND
   
   
 * Social Customer Service
   
    * CUSTOMER SERVICE OVERVIEW
   
    * TREND 1: THE CHATBOT TREND
   
    * TREND 2 THE REMIT TREND
   
   
 * Quiz

Download report

 * Overview
 * Social Marketing
 * Social Commerce
 * Social Customer Service
 * Quiz

Download report




THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL MARKETING




As marketing budgets continue to recover from the pandemic, social media spend
is on its way up. Marketers are feeling more confident not just in the return on
investment (ROI) of social media, but also in their ability to prove it to even
the most skeptical of executives. In 2023, we’ll see this confidence inspire
marketers to get more strategic on platforms that can seem determined to make
that as difficult as possible.

Keep reading



HERE’S WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT FROM THE YEAR AHEAD...

 1. 
 2. 
 3. 

Small businesses cozy up to creators

Big brands stop competing for creators, leaving the door wide open for small
businesses

Read now
Budgets on the line as bosses demand social receipts

Growing investment in social exposes it to new levels of scrutiny

Read now
Social innovators escape the tyranny of tactics

Marketers stop chasing new features and start getting more strategic instead.

Read now
 1. Small businesses cozy up to creators
    
    Big brands stop competing for creators, leaving the door wide open for small
    businesses
    
    Read now
 2. Budgets on the line as bosses demand social receipts
    
    Growing investment in social exposes it to new levels of scrutiny
    
    Read now
 3. Social innovators escape the tyranny of tactics
    
    Marketers stop chasing new features and start getting more strategic
    instead.
    
    Read now

MARKETING TREND 1



SMALL BUSINESSES COZY UP TO CREATORS

Larger brands tighten up their creator budgets, leaving the door wide open for
small businesses






BIG BRANDS ARE COMPETING LESS FOR CREATORS


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BIG BRANDS ARE COMPETING LESS FOR CREATORS


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For months, concerns over a seemingly inevitable recession have fueled
restructures, layoffs, and operating budget cuts. Businesses are rethinking
their spending—and often, marketing budgets are first on the chopping block. 

While we haven’t seen massive cuts in marketing spend just yet, we are seeing
larger businesses reduce their discretionary spending. Budget for creator
partnerships has been one of the first things to take a hit, with small and
midsize content creators saying they’re seeing declining sponsorship offers and
more brands backing out of paid deals this year. 

While this pullback in spending is a blow to an already precarious creator
economy, it leaves the door wide open for smaller businesses to compete for top
creators at lower price points.


CREATORS CAN HELP SMALL BUSINESSES WITH THEIR MOST ACUTE MARKETING CHALLENGES

Small businesses say they’re feeling pinched by a possible recession, too.
Twenty-eight percent of small business owners expect revenues to decrease over
the next year, according to the CNBC Small Business Confidence Index. And 18% of
small business owners expect their headcounts to decrease over the same period. 

For small businesses, 2023 promises to be a year of dwindling resources,
shrinking headcounts, and leaner budgets that will make their toughest marketing
challenges, well, even tougher. To ease the pressure, small business owners will
begin leaning on the very creators being abandoned by larger businesses.

With the recession, with COVID, and just being more financially pinched…
marketing dollars always get cut. When we’re strapped for resources, creators
become a very appealing tool for marketers.

Leah Gritton
Director of Integration Strategy
Energy BBDO


THE MAJORITY OF SMALL BUSINESSES DON’T WORK WITH CREATORS—YET

Our social trends survey found that smaller organizations are the least likely
to work with creators; 72% of small businesses (those with less than 100
employees) don’t work with creators in any capacity, while nearly 42% of
businesses with over 1,000 employees do work with creators.

What’s the biggest barrier to entry for small businesses? Cost. 

“Our main challenge is just the volatility of pricing,” says Ruby Soave, head of
influencer marketing at Student Beans. “There’s such a lack of standardization
of how much work should cost that negotiating good prices gets murky.”  

From expensive creator agencies to massive variations in the way creators price
themselves, many smaller businesses feel in the dark about how much they should
pay to work with creators.



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CREATORS AREN’T AS OUT OF REACH AS YOU THINK

Most organizations don’t go through agencies to find creators. Less than a third
(28%) of brands that work with creators do so through agencies or third-party
platforms, according to our survey. For small business owners, this means less
overhead and much more control over who you choose to hire and negotiate with.

And working with influencers also isn’t as expensive as you might think. Most
creators are paid less than $100 US per post.

Now, this isn’t license to pay creators nothing. Without fair pay, marketers
jeopardize the future of the creator economy altogether. But for
resource-strapped small businesses looking to grow reach and let experts create
their content for them, cost-effective creators are well within reach.



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TREND IN ACTION


PANTEE TEAMS UP WITH CREATORS WHO SHARE THEIR VALUES, UNITING ON THEIR MISSION
TO REDUCE FASHION WASTE

UK-based sustainable underwear brand Pantee has masterfully blended its creator
strategy with its mission to reduce fashion waste and make the world a more
comfortable place. Currently, the fashion industry produces an estimated 92
million tonnes of textile waste each year, and with approximately 30% of clothes
made never even sold, the excess (deadstock) is often destined for waste.

Pantee made it their mission to challenge the fashion industry by making comfy
underwear with this deadstock, for women by women. To double down on their
principles, they partner with creators who not only share their values but who
truly love their products—particularly those advocating for sustainability,
mental health, and body positivity.

“We’ve started working with creators who are passionate about the same things we
are”, says Pantee co-founder Amanda McCourt. “We really look to collaborate with
creators who have a clear connection with our mission and truly love our
products. If a creator wouldn’t buy from us, we don’t feel comfortable working
with them to promote our brand. We always strive for truth and transparency.”

Pantee has been working closely with TikTok and Instagram creators whose
self-described mission is mindful shopping to better reach the communities that
align with their brand's sustainability mission. Beyond that, Pantee uses
partnerships with creators as an opportunity to showcase their products on a
multitude of shapes and sizes to contribute to the normalization of all bodies.



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RECOMMENDATIONS

Do your research

Hootsuite search streams can help you discover influencers by monitoring
conversations relevant to your industry across all your social networks. Once
you have an initial set of creators in mind, add them to a stream to track what
they share and who they engage with. This will help you understand their
relevance to your audience and identify other potential influencers to work
with.


Go for strategic focus, not reach

Don’t shy away from creators with fewer followers. Large follower sizes don’t
necessarily lead to higher conversions. What’s more important is finding a
creator who can collaborate with you to make inspiring content relevant to your
product or service.


Use UTM codes to track and measure results

While there are many ways to measure the success of your creator campaigns, UTM
codes are the best way to get a clear picture of the results. Assign each
creator their own unique links with UTM codes and you’ll be able to track the
visitors they send to your website, allowing you to calculate their impact on
your bottom line.





PUT IT INTO ACTION

Start your creator collaborations off the right way—with this free creator brief
(and statement of work) template.

Grab the template

MARKETING TREND 2



BUDGETS ON THE LINE AS BOSSES DEMAND SOCIAL RECEIPTS

Growing investment in social exposes it to new levels of scrutiny




CONFIDENCE IN THE ROI OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING IS AT AN ALL-TIME HIGH


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CONFIDENCE IN THE ROI OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING IS AT AN ALL-TIME HIGH


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Social media has spent over a decade fighting to prove its place in the
marketing mix—and it’s decisively found it. Marketers’ confidence in the value
of social media marketing is at an all-time high. 

Last year, 83% of marketers in our survey reported having some level of
confidence in the return on investment (ROI) of social media, up from 68% the
year before. This year, we got more specific and asked how confident marketers
were that social media was useful for marketing to or engaging with their
audience. A whopping 96% of marketers reported some level of confidence.

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It should come as no surprise that almost every social media marketing
practitioner we surveyed says social media marketing has value. (If you’re one
of the 4% who said otherwise, we’re here to help.) 

But what’s telling is that this confidence is clearly reflected in the
proportion of the marketing budget allocated to social. While marketing budgets
have climbed to nearly 10% of total company revenue in 2022 (up from 6% in
2021), they still lag pre-pandemic levels. Spend on social media relative to
pre-pandemic levels is going up too—and it’s predicted to increase steadily over
the next five years.


MORE VISIBILITY MEANS MORE SCRUTINY

Social media’s newfound visibility has the potential to open it to higher levels
of scrutiny—especially as leadership whips out the magnifying glass over the
coming year. 

During market downturns, many execs will look to shore up costs and manage
expenses as much as possible. And in the marketing department, the pressure will
fall on individual contributors and middle managers to clearly demonstrate the
value they bring to the table. 

This is where social media practitioners run into problems. Our survey found
that, when it comes to social media, seniority has a major impact on how
individuals perceive and demonstrate the value of social.


OUR SURVEY TOLD US THAT...

 * Practitioners were 17% more likely than the C-suite to say their organization
   uses impressions/views to demonstrate ROI.

 * VPs were 7% more likely than practitioners to say they used time spent on
   their brand’s website/app to demonstrate ROI.

 * C-level executives were 13% more likely than practitioners to say they used
   sales/revenue to demonstrate ROI.

In 2023, marketing practitioners and leadership have to have a deeper
conversation about goals to make sure everyone’s on the same page. If that
conversation doesn’t happen and social remains so visible within the marketing
budget over the next year, there’s a risk that leadership may pull investment if
they don’t truly understand the value of the channel.



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EXPERT PERSPECTIVE


CHRIS THOMAS


GLOBAL SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE AND OPTIMIZATION LEAD, SAGE

Q: How will the market downturn impact marketing budgets in 2023? A: The move
towards a bear market is inevitably going to focus budgets on things which
deliver core business objectives. And core business objectives are always going
to be, to some extent, demand-led. But brand marketing has been an underserved
and under-resourced part of the mix over the last few years. I’d point to
Ehrenberg Bass and Binet and Field—all of that good stuff that's been bubbling
up in Adland over the last few years, it's evidence to the point that we can’t
preoccupy ourselves with demand-led strategies at the expense of long-term brand
building.Q: Do you think senior leadership at most organizations understands the
importance of that balance? A: I'm seeing a greater level of education in our
stakeholders and also a greater level of skepticism. I think people are becoming
a lot more savvy at [the] leadership level about understanding the dynamics of
social and questioning what their domain specialists are telling them.There
absolutely used to be a period, probably three or four years ago, where fake
Facebook fortune tellers would say ‘we can attribute 60% of our sales to
social.’ That was taken pretty much at face value as an article of faith and
nobody would dig too deeply. I like to think that’s changing. Q: What advice
would you give a social media manager who’s asked to do this kind of surgical
attribution when it isn’t actually possible? A: Personally, I’ll never put my
neck on the block for numbers that I don't believe in. And in a climate where
there is that increased forensic scrutiny at a senior level, I actually think
that's a really important principle.As a social media professional, you need to
get yourself to a place where you've educated yourself around attribution and
that you look at the numbers really, really critically to build up a case that
you feel confident in—one that you can stand up for 30 minutes in front of the
CEO and justify it to them. If you can't do that, I'd say you've got a problem.



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RECOMMENDATIONS

Track metrics that align with your business objectives

All social media metrics can tell you something about whether you’re achieving
objectives and meeting your goals. But tracking the right metrics is the key to
understanding your social ROI. Start with a focus on the few metrics that help
you tell the right story and build your business case. Then check them regularly
by setting up automated reports that go to your inbox, so you don’t have to
remember to pull them yourself.


Create an ROI report that shows the true impact of social

Creating a social media report is an important part of social media management.
After all, tracking and analyzing your performance is the only way to really
understand what you’re accomplishing through your social efforts. It’s also the
only way to demonstrate the value of your social marketing efforts to your team
and your boss. Here’s a template to help you get started.


Remember the big picture

Don’t chase short-term ROI to the point that you lose sight of what makes your
brand valuable and unique. Jumping on a trend just to get likes and comments
doesn’t provide value if it annoys your audience or muddies your brand voice. It
can even damage your brand in the long term. 

Don’t forget that the big picture of social media ROI includes returns beyond
the marketing department. You can use social media to improve customer service
and strengthen employee relationships—both worthwhile and valuable achievements
that you should include when you consider ROI.




PUT IT INTO ACTION

Impress your boss with a concise report highlighting just how well things are
going on social, using this free report template.

Grab the template

MARKETING TREND 3



SOCIAL INNOVATORS CRACK THE CROSS-POSTING CODE

Marketers stop chasing new features and start getting more strategic instead




THE FRANKENSTEINING OF THE SOCIAL NETWORKS CONTINUES


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THE FRANKENSTEINING OF THE SOCIAL NETWORKS CONTINUES


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From Stories to Reels to Twitter’s ill-fated Fleets (remember those?), social
media companies have spent much of the past decade tripping over themselves to
copy their competitors’ most successful features.  

Some of the most popular social media apps have blatantly ripped off features
from some of the other most popular social media apps in what Gizmodo has called
a tech version of Capture the Flag “where the only losers are the users who are
forced to persist through this cat-and-mouse game.” 

But this game has not only come at the expense of user experience but also at
the expense of the sanity of social media marketers, whose work lives now
revolve around constantly adapting their plans to new formats, repurposing
content, and wondering when the next network change will upend their carefully
organized campaign.


PEOPLE GO TO DIFFERENT NETWORKS FOR DIFFERENT REASONS

What the networks have failed to consider is that user attention is not a zero
sum game. People on one social platform are often on several others as well. And
most social media users spend time on multiple platforms. 

More than 84% of TikTok users are also on Facebook and almost 88% of Twitter
users are also on Instagram. People don’t only get different types of value from
different networks, they explicitly use different social networks for different
purposes.

On Facebook, they might catch up with a friend overseas. On Twitter, they might
skim over the day’s breaking news. And on TikTok, they might look for a laugh
while searching for the latest viral trends. 

Adding competitor capabilities to one network doesn’t change the perception
people have spent years forming of what a specific network is meant for. That’s
why Instagram Reels, for example, is struggling to compete with TikTok—even
though it’s basically the same thing. 

In fact, stealing a competitor’s features may actually have a negative impact on
the perception of a social network—take this Change.org petition with over
300,000 signatures asking that Instagram stop trying to copy TikTok.



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SUCCESSFUL MARKETERS KNOW THAT STRATEGY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN TACTICS

With so many demands on their time and resources—and with networks looking more
and more similar by the day—it’s no surprise that 52% of respondents to our
survey said they cross-post content to multiple social platforms with as few
changes as possible. Just 18% of marketers create different posts from scratch
for each platform.

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But while cross-posting saves time, it comes with a heavy cost: results. Our
survey found that marketers who create different posts from scratch for each
network are significantly more confident in the value of that content.

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As the Frankensteining of social networks continues, the most confident
marketers will spend less time worrying about which copycat feature to start
using next and more time exploring platforms that best reflect their business
goals. They’ll focus on creating content that’s well suited to those platforms,
rather than trying to keep up with every feature-level change the networks throw
their way.

> 

TREND IN ACTION


HOW THE WASHINGTON POST BRINGS THE NEWS TO A NEW GENERATION ON TIKTOK

The Washington Post may be 140 years old, but with the help of their social
media manager Dave Jorgenson—lovingly known as the WaPo TikTok guy—they’ve found
a way to introduce a new generation to serious journalism in frequently
unserious ways. 

Jorgenson has helped the company amass over 1.4 million followers by sharing his
tongue-in-cheek videos about life at the office and memes about current events.

When you compare The Washington Post’s lighthearted approach to TikTok with
their Facebook or Twitter presence, it’s clear they’re being strategic about who
they’re making their content for on each network. On a platform like TikTok,
where people go to be entertained rather than informed, Jorgenson’s absurdist
approach to the news has turned the Washington Post into a Gen Z darling. 



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RECOMMENDATIONS

Conduct a social media audit

If you’re already using social media, take stock of your efforts so far. Ask
yourself the following questions: What’s working, and what’s not? Which networks
does your target audience use? How does your social media presence compare to
the competition? Once you collect that information, you’re ready to brainstorm
ways to improve. We’ve created an easy-to-follow social media audit guide to
walk you through each step of this process.


Make your content fit for each platform

By making your content fit for each platform, you can provide experiences that
are in line with your audience’s reasons for being there—and that’s a much
stronger insight to base your strategy on than demographics alone.  


Search for inspiration

All of the social networks feature success stories that highlight how brands use
their tools effectively. You can usually find these on the business section of
the social network’s website. (For example, take a look at the Facebook business
success stories.) These case studies offer valuable insights you can apply to
your own goals for each social network.





PUT IT INTO ACTION

Run the easiest social media audit—with this handy free template.

Grab the template


SEE WHAT'S IN STORE FOR 2023


 * SOCIAL COMMERCE TRENDS
   
   Social overtakes search engines and marketers work to build trust in social
   shopping. Here’s what’s ahead for social commerce.
   
   Explore Commerce Trends


 * SOCIAL CUSTOMER SERVICE TRENDS
   
   Chatbots help keep customers happy and marketers lean into customer service.
   Peek into the wild future of customer experience.
   
   Explore Customer Service Trends

 * Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard - Hootsuite


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