I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but we are living in a new revolution — the digital revolution.
And because of this, marketing has changed; it has become increasingly obvious that it is no longer about “sell sell sell” but “engage engage engage”.
In this 140 character and 15 second video era, it is evident that consumers’ attention spans are readily decreasing so the most common question marketers are asking is, “how can we effectively engage our audiences without losing them?”.
The answer is social media. As Gary Vaynerchuk usually states, we need to stop viewing social media as a distribution channel. It’s not about what you post that makes the difference. Everyone is on this craze about content, but I’d like to argue that what makes great social media methods is rarely the content but the experiences. We need to continuously think of how we can take our businesses and make them “social”.
This brings me to the point of this post — gone are the days of SEO and websites. Google announced a decline in Adwords advertising, this signifies that the digital economy is moving from ads to social.
The future I predict, for SME marketing, is a future where all businesses are housed on a Facebook page — this will become a place where brands and consumers can engage. The page will act as a website, advertising platform, microblog and so much more. Your audience wouldn’t need to leave Facebook to read your blogs nor contact you. We’d be able to make the interactions with consumers more social, instant and personal.
Instead of email, audiences can simply “inbox” their favourite brands and engage in a two-way conversation.
This is the future I predict and I believe the businesses that will catch on faster, will ultimately win.
About the author: Lebogang Mokubela is the CEO of Lemok Digital Agency, the #1 preferred digital marketing agency for small-to-medium businesses with a focus on sales. You can follow him on @LemokAgency
Editor’s note: This 2016 prediction has not held up. Nearly a decade on, SEO and business websites have not been replaced by social media, they remain essential channels for South African SMEs. Search still sends significant free, high intent traffic to small business websites, and an owned website protects a business from the risks of depending entirely on a single social platform, including algorithm changes, policy shifts and account bans. Social media has proven to be a powerful complement to SEO and websites, not a substitute for them.
