With the expansion of the digital landscape, social media has become a crowded space. Just think about it, can you remember the last branded content you saw on a social media platform? The chances of you not recollecting is about 80%. That is because brands are not just competing with each other, they are also competing with every single content piece and event that is available on these platforms. Therefore, as it’s difficult to reach your audience through this clutter, it’s almost impossible to buy their attention. Most of the brands are of the notion that they should be in the biggest platform like everyone else does. Eventually, these branded content drown in a sea of million other content and events that distract it from its target audience.
Technological advancements in digital marketing have almost distracted us from doing our ground research and exploring effective and smart ways to reach our audience. While most brands opt for popular ways of using digital platforms to advertise, other effective opportunities remain neglected and unexplored just within your reach. With regard to such opportunities, almost all popular social media platforms are allowing users to create small communities, to gather people with the same interest in to a closed group. At present, a steady trend can be witnessed in the formation of these communities. For example if the news feed is too cluttered netizens prefer to avoid it or be somewhere they see only the things they are interested in. As advertisers, you don’t have to explore the whole sea, you should know where exactly to throw your net. These focus groups have higher engagement and open up for brands to engage with their audience in authentic ways. However, the challenge is that a brand would have to find authentic approaches to attract their audiences because when they are in a closed group, the last thing they would want to see is an advertisement.
As much as there are opportunities within popular platforms, new platforms are coming into play. Everybody wants a piece of their favourite pie. Everyone is blind to opportunities on other platforms. Everybody wants to play safe, nobody wants to be the first to experiment or to explore other upcoming platforms. In fact, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are not the only popular and engaging platforms. Imagine how difficult it was to get crowdsourced video content through Facebook and Instagram over the past years? Well, now there’s Tik Tok with a 500 million active population (Worldwide) with an average 52 minutes per day on the app creating millions of crowdsourced video content. Lately, I’ve noticed brands using Tik Tok but there’s more to it if you are looking forward to having fun!
On the other hand, have you ever thought of taking advantage of platforms like WhatsApp, despite the fact that it does not allow you to advertise in the traditional sense? According to a WhatsApp report – Globally, there are around 1.5 Billion users and a user spends 195 minutes on average on WhatsApp weekly. WhatsApp has become the centre of everything digital because everything gets shared there. How about an unbranded sticker? An article with a thumb-stopping topic? A video with a clickable thumbnail? It’s just a matter of approaching the right communities in WhatsApp through different groups.
If you are a digital planner, go crazy! Don’t limit your thinking for the basic ways of advertising. Bigger and popular platforms are the best to rise to prominence, but when it comes to engagement, the focus should be on smaller communities with the same interest. First-mover advantages are the best, don’t hesitate on trying new things. The advantage of digital is that there is something new happening every day. Certainly, it is indeed cluttered! But chaos creates opportunities.
This article is authored by Ama Silva, Senior Manager – Digital Operations, Isobar Srilanka.
