
Hubspot Sheds Light on Social Media's Future
CIO Review APAC | Saturday, April 22, 2023

Nowadays, social media marketers are inundated daily with information on evolving trends, social platforms that are gaining or losing steam, and new types of content. A defining moment in the business allows social media marketers to cement their worth.
Markets were booming by the end of the previous year after pandemic restrictions were eased. The situation appears to be much more problematic as 2023 approaches. For firms of all sizes, the situation is hazardous due to a coming recession, rising prices, decreased consumer spending, and labour reductions across key economic sectors. Despite this unpredictability, many social media marketers are in a position of relative security because they are receiving increasing portions of the overall marketing budget and more control over their job. The field of social media marketing has finally reached maturity after more than ten years of growing pains.
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Successful social marketers in 2023 will carefully consider their possibilities, use a scalpel rather than a cleaver, and consider the long-term effects of their immediate decisions. Those that do so will definitively prove their value.
Spending on social media is rising as marketing budgets begin to recover from the pandemic. Marketers are increasingly confident in their capacity to convince even the most cynical executives of the return on investment (ROI) of social media. This assurance will encourage advertisers to be more strategic in 2023, even on platforms that may seem out to make that as challenging as possible.
Small businesses cosy up to creators: Small businesses gain an advantage over the big brands when they stop competing for creators. Small firms reveal that they are also feeling the strain from a potential recession. 28 per cent of small business owners anticipate declining revenues during the upcoming year. And 18 per cent of small business owners anticipate a decline in staff during that time.
Small businesses will have their most difficult marketing issues in 2023 as a result of declining resources, declining headcounts, and reduced budgets. Small business owners will start relying on the very creators that larger corporations are leaving behind to relieve the load.
Budgets on the line as bosses demand social receipts: The growing investment in social media exposes it to new levels of scrutiny. Over the past ten years, social media has fought to establish its position in the marketing mix, and it has successfully done so. The belief of marketers in the worth of social media marketing has never been higher. 83 per cent of marketers exposed they were somewhat confident in the return on investment (ROI) of social media last year, up from 68 per cent the year before. This year, marketers remark on the confidence they have in the value of social media for engaging with or marketing to their audience. 96 per cent of marketers said they were confident in some way.
What's telling is how much of the marketing spend is devoted to social media, which is indicative of this confidence. Despite increasing to about ten per cent of total corporate sales in 2022, marketing budgets are still below pre-pandemic levels. Spending on social media is rising in comparison to pre-pandemic levels and is expected to continue doing so over the next five years.
The increased prominence of social media has the potential to subject it to greater degrees of examination, particularly when leadership uses a magnifying lens in the upcoming year.
Many executives will try to stabilise costs and control spending as much as they can during market downturns. And in the marketing division, it will be up to middle managers and individual contributors to make a case for the value they bring to the table. Social media users encounter challenges in this area. Seniority has a significant influence on how people view and use social media.
To ensure that everyone is on the same page in 2023, marketing practitioners and leaders need to have a more in-depth discussion about goals. In the next year, social media spending is set to continue being prominent in the marketing budget and leadership may withdraw funding if they fail to fully grasp the channel's value.
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