Social Media is an everyday habit, but not everyone is interested in building relationship with brands on Social Media. This applies to both B2C and B2B.
Social media platforms will face increased pressure from all stakeholders, including brand owners, to be socially responsible. For instance, Lush decided to shut down their Facebook and Instagram accounts for ethical reasons. Consequently, owners of social media platforms will encounter stricter regulations by the end of 2022.
Social Media Noise
Although 96% of people don’t trust ads, they will continue scrolling through images and videos on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook for entertainment and window-shopping purposes. Accordingly, B2C marketers will spend a larger proportion of their budget on influencer marketing and paid campaigns in 2022.
It won’t surprise anybody to see more B2C brands find themselves getting unwanted publicity in 2022, as they no longer have the luxury of controlling the narrative.
The “any publicity is good publicity” mantra will be seen as a detrimental mentality in 2022 when it comes to brand building and reputation management.
Social Commerce
Social Commerce is a thing in the world of B2C but only a few businesses like Amazon and eBay (owner of PayPal) will benefit from the technology.
Credit card companies and banks will see tougher competition in 2022 from Buy-Now-Pay-Later services like PayPal Credit, Klarna, and ClearPay, as customers have already altered their shopping habits. For example, noticing these changes in consumer behavior and market trends earlier in 2021, Amazon decided to end its relationship with Visa. It’s clear that many people often find it hard to ‘Pay-Later’.
- Source: Open Money
Therefore, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see Meta, formerly known as Facebook, to roll out Facebook Pay across the group as a preferred method of payment for all purchases made on their Social Media platforms, including for both B2B and B2C advertisers.
B2B Social Media Management
Social Media, used effectively, is a powerful driver of brand awareness and demand generation in the world of B2B.
Business leaders will demand change to ensure growth and sustainability. This will begin with raising the bar by tasking their Marketing Directors to define more tangible and meaningful KPIs for 2022 and beyond.
More B2B leaders will encourage their employees to share branded content, not only because individuals’ organic reach is higher in the Social Media sphere, but as buyers are more likely to trust the content shared by people.
Emergence of Creativity and Influence
2022 will be a year when CEOs and CMOs expect more from their Creative Directors and Advertising Agencies. The expectation is set to go beyond just producing a creative advert. The demand will be formed around how interesting the advert is to influence a purchase; resulting in a challenging year for B2B Creative Directors and Advertising Agencies.
When it comes to B2B Social Media ecosystem, everyone contributes towards:
- Sales
- Design
- Branding
- Marketing
- Recruitment
- Brand Protection
- Business Development
B2B buyers tend to evaluate various touchpoints prior to making a procurement decision. Needless to say, credibility and reliability of suppliers in the B2B space is not defined by their ads but by their behaviour and service delivery.
B2B Social Media Operations
Despite Social Media platform owners’ efforts, B2B decision-makers will invest more in advocacy programmes, webinars, thought leadership content and videos in 2022. However, Paid Social Media should not be overlooked, as when structured systematically, they can be effective.
Social Selling and Brand Advocacy programmes will take over influencer marketing in the B2B environment. More businesses will acknowledge the fact that productivity and growth depend on building meaningful relationships and partnerships with customers and true industry key thought leaders.
B2B leaders will take a hybrid workplace approach in response to market shifts and demands. B2B marketers will continue to compete for the buyers’ attention, spending between £3.20-£5.83 per click to drive traffic to their webinars, whitepapers, and events registration pages. B2B organisations in Europe will spend less resources on Meta (Facebook).
Recommendations
B2B marketers will be able to drive MQLs in 2022 only if their first impression is designed based on ACT:
B2C marketers need to base their campaigns on HTC to increase sales volume and business profitability:
Conclusion
2022 can be a great year for businesses. It depends on how proactive and strategic they are in embracing change. It is ultimately the business leaders’ choice to surround themselves with prayers or game-changers (I will cover more about this in my next article).
Many business decision-makers in 2022 will realise they expected too much from technology and far less from themselves as individuals.
The ultimate winners in 2022 are those businesses with the mentality and attitude towards creating and empowering communities with the intent to drive mutually beneficial results.
Technology is only useful if it makes brands more human.