Tom Welbourne
Helping Small and Medium Businesses Achieve Their Full Marketing Potential | Digital Marketing Expert
The Future Of Digital Marketing
- May 2, 2019
- , 9:06 am
The Digital Marketing landscape has changed so much already and there seems to be a new feature that is being added to digital marketing channels such as Facebook + Google every day (actually happens nearly every week).
It’s hard to keep up with all that is going on and unless you’re a Digital Marketer by profession, it can be quite hard to keep up with the new updates that are being rolled out.
With regards to the future, the changes that are going to be made are even more complex.
Mark Zuckerberg has just announced a bunch of features for Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram platforms that will be open to users and advertisers of the platforms very soon.
In this article, we’ll cover what the changes consist of, what they mean to consumers and advertisers and a few other updates that you will see being rolled out in the near future.
INSTAGRAM LIKES ARE GOING TO BE REMOVED
A lot of the people using Instagram will be focused on one core metric when they use the platform and that is how many likes their posts are getting and how many likes other posts are getting.
We have some news for you…
Instagram is running a trial at the moment where they will hide the likes from viewers of the post and only show them to the person whose post it is.
Why is Instagram removing the likes feature?
Their reason for removing likes is to encourage people to focus on what you share and not on how many likes you get.
We think there is a positive and negative to this.
The positive is that people who post valuable posts will be more likely to rise to the top and vanity metrics such as likes will no longer sway a person viewing the post in liking it because everyone else has or for any other inauthentic reason.
The negative is that it removes the social proof from a post. We’re always looking to see what others are doing and how they are reacting. By removing the like feature, you’re also removing the social proof that the feature holds.
WHATSAPP IS GOING TO BE USED FOR PAYMENTS
The boss of Facebook has said that he wants to make purchasing through the app as easy as sending a photo to a friend.
If he sticks to his word and payments do become as quick and easy as sending a photo then he’s going to be rivalling the likes of Amazon who are known for their easy checkout process.
This feature has already been trialled in India and will be rolled out to other countries very soon.
What does this mean for business owners?
Well, if you’re using Whatsapp already then things are going to get a whole lot easier to sell and you can expect your conversion rates to increase quite quickly. If you’re not using Whatsapp but run an ecommerce store for example, expect your conversion rates to increase also.
CONTENT CREATORS ARE GOING TO BE USED MUCH MORE BY COMPANIES TO SELL THEIR PRODUCTS
This has already been rolled with the likes of Influencers and content creators already. However, the key difference this time round is that influencers will be able to tag exactly what they are wearing/using in their photos and allow people to purchase within the app.
A big factor that changes a potential buyers mind in the process of purchasing a product is the friction caused in order to purchase the product/service.
The more hoops a consumer has to go through, the more friction is caused and the more likely they are going to abandon purchasing your product or service.
With this new feature, friction is going to be set to almost zero and allow people to purchase almost immediately. This is why Amazon run such a tight ship – they remove the friction of purchasing a product on their site with just one-click.
COMMUNITY IS THE MAIN FOCUS GOING AHEAD
Despite the technological advances that society has made, they are based on basic psychological instincts that humans have had innately in them from the beginning of time.
Not too long ago we were all round a campfire as a community in our tribes. Now, we’re in our tribes still but on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
You can use one hashtag or join a group on Facebook and immediately you are part of that tribe.
Facebook is going to make this the focal point on the newsfeed and put community groups right at the top.
Why are they doing this?
As mentioned above, for the tribalism innate to humans, but also to encourage people to spend more time on the platform. Facebook is getting to the point where the number of users joining the platform is levelling out and plateauing, now they are focusing more on how much time people spend on the platform.
Engagement is going to be the key metric and increasing user generated content (UGC) is what it’s going to be all about for Facebook.
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