The pandemic has marked a before and after in social networks. During the quarantine, people were forced to spend more time on their mobile devices consuming endless content; this caused the digital consumer to have an accelerated change in their behavior.
Today, there is an advance in trends much faster and adaptable to the needs of a new consumer, where the main actor is social media and their great reach and influence in the consumer society.
According to Francisco Higuera, Associate Director and David Pérez, Associate Media Director of Publicis Media, a company that together with Prodigious are part of Publicis Groupe, the 2 major social media trends that will mark 2022 are: social commerce and mixed reality.
Social commerce- Social Media applications continue to evolve and will continue to revolutionize the way products are consumed, improving the marketplace that they have integrated and achieving that union of Social Media and E-commerce. People are now going to see any video and in this all the products will be mapped, redirecting to the company’s website.
“Brands must be vigilant because these sales channels are going to increase. This is already being developed by Facebook with its applications, but more Social Media companies are going to take advantage of this opportunity. ByteDance, owner of TikTok, is advancing in the creation of its marketplace, to capitalize on the audience that it currently has entertained, to start generating sales with it”, explained Francisco Higuera, Associate Director of Publicis Media.
According to the specialist, by 2022 we will see the culmination of this union of 2 phenomena that were previously thought separately as Social Media and e-commerce, it will be reflected as branding and content approach sales having the opportunity to show their value direct versus business growth.
In addition, if a successful social media campaign is carried out, we will take into account the entire operation of the company, the fulfillment center, the days of shipment, the amount of product there is. We are going to stop seeing social networks as clearly a communication channel to a new sales channel that, if done correctly, will affect the entire business.
Mixed reality- It has generated a lot of noise in the NFTs and the development of the metaverse. While it arrives in a massive way, it is necessary to start working with the logic of this reality, unifying brand experiences in the digital world and the real world as a great, unique and constant experience. Brands must be ready to launch their products online and their real products, this is going to change the way we live and shop.
“What comes in mixed reality is unimaginable, that is what you should aim for in the next 5 to 10 years as a brand. The most important thing about this trend is to understand that social media are going to be our first door of interaction of mixed reality and we must start building from this moment. Thinking that people are going to connect digitally and the real world is one of the biggest changes that will be experienced”, mentioned David Pérez, Associate Media Director of Publicis Media.
In 2022, social brands will seek to generate VR actions that unite the 2 worlds. One must think beyond a filter, and understand the use of augmented reality as an extension of the experiences already created in digital. Another way that the digital world is going to join the real world is the continuous integration of brands in digital events in disruptive and increasingly immersive activations such as concerts.
“My recommendation is to take the risk, but accompanied by experts who can read the digital world to understand what is happening, how it can be solved, and what must be changed. The consumer does not want everything at the same time, to achieve success as a brand you must understand 2 simple things: one, at what time of the day do I interact with my user and, two, what should I give them”, said Higuera.
All this can be achieved with the correct management of the end customer’s data, which helps to generate predictive models to find the user and deliver what they need. So with this data, 2 aspects are fulfilled: for the client to improve his experience by giving him “what he wants when he wants it” and for the company to optimize its processes.
According to experts, there is a consumer with much more confidence in digital shopping, with a 66% increase in purchases in Latin America, being a clear indicator that shows that fear of online shopping was broken and it is very difficult to this from a turn back. So the challenge is to show the correct messages to the audiences and increasingly creative messages that generate a link with the brands.
The characteristics and profiles of the clients must be analyzed from 2 fronts:
• Try to establish if these characteristics are consistent with the brand/product, which would generate a greater connection with the customer.
• Identify what kind of new connections (lookalike audiences) can be identified for the brand/service in order to have better segmentation for social media marketing initiatives.
“Knowing consumers very well is what will give us that bonus of being able to connect, attract, fall in love, and retain. On the other hand, we cannot put innovation aside. And this is something that goes hand in hand with social media, each social media gives us the components to be unique, make a difference, get out of the mold, and make our strategy something truly memorable”, said Pérez.
Publicis Media specialists also mention that Costa Rica ranks second in Latin America in internet use; that 8 out of 10 Costa Ricans have internet access; and that approximately 60% of the population is user of social media.
The profile of Costa Ricans in the last year has been characterized by the predominance of Facebook as a social media, and an age range between 25 to 35 years of the population with the most social profiles on the different platforms.
TikTok will dominate even more in Costa Rica and will be a global trend where more and more brands will try to connect with their consumers on this platform, which, unlike other social networks, opens the possibility of displaying digital advertising in an entertaining way and that has been the factor that has it as one of the social media in which many brands have their eyes set for 2022.
