The world of marketing and advertising has taken on a new chapter. Over a short span of few years, it has moved from the conventional push strategies to those that pull the customers. And in this transformation, the marketers around the world have adopted a multi-channel approach to attract customers. A significant part of this strategy is the social media marketing that has rattled the old and monotonous ways of advertising and promotion.

Social media marketing, as the name suggest is a moniker for internet marketing that utilises social networking websites as marketing tools. This form of marketing takes on the popularity of social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and companies in recent years have started to adopt this tool to gain access to a much larger consumer base and a much engaged audience.

The age of traditional marketing is fading away and digital advertising revenues are staggeringly overtaking the TV ad spend. This might not be the case in Pakistan as of now as majority of the advertising spend is still on TV and billboards. Still there are many brands that lack an understanding of digital marketing, while it is difficult to judge how much advertising revenue is being generated in Pakistan via social media as of now; the potential is unbeatable with the country’s growing internet and social media penetration. However, Sajjad Mustafa Syed, CEO ExD (Pvt.) Limited in his recent conversation with BR Research highlighted that many big companies and MNCs today are moving to social media marketing and those that are not will have to quickly catch up or they would be left behind. (For the complete discussion, refer to the interview with Mr. Sajjad Mustafa Syed published on Monday, 05 March 2018).

There are global some trends in the coming years in that are worth watching out for in social media marketing. Rise of social media means higher engagement rate between customers and the companies, which includes increased communication, heightened feedback and meaningful CSR.

Also, the rise of video content and animation has been noticed in social media marketing, and is likely to grow unprecedented in the coming years. Moreover, personalization will be a key; marketers are already cashing on catching those micro moments through targeted and segmental advertising.

The marketing world will see increased activity when it comes chat rooms and chatbots, making communication with brands and companies extremely easy and accessible. Then the term influencer marketing is gaining traction where the focus of marketing activities is on an influential people rather the target market as a whole. These individual are those who can then influence the target audience and potential buyers. The trends in social media marketing are changing fast just as the digital world is progressing. And the rate of adoption by companies and brands should growth proportionately to keep abreast with the dynamism of the sector.