While brands have an unprecedented array of channels to connect with customers, many performance-driven social media marketers have become more cautious, favoring established platforms like Meta over exploring new avenues. However, the surge in social spending, initiated during the 2020 quarantine and persisting through the pandemic’s final stages, shows no signs of slowing down.

eMarketer forecasts an 18.2% increase in social network ad spending, reaching $74.56 billion by the end of 2022—constituting 30% of total digital ad spend. This trend is expected to persist, with social network ad spending projected to grow to 31.6% of all digital ad spending by 2024.

Consumers exhibit a shift in social media behavior, with adults dedicating more time to TikTok and YouTube compared to Facebook and Instagram. Their increased online presence underscores the rising reliance on these newer social channels for trustworthy brand discovery, product research, and direct purchases.

Brands failing to adapt to these evolving preferences risk losing ground to competitors. It’s crucial to meet customers where they are, even if platforms with changing preferences offer less advanced ad options or attribution capabilities.

Even Meta, the pinnacle of social media advertising, faces the repercussions of data privacy constraints. Formerly precision-crafted campaigns on Facebook now operate within altered expectations, as Meta eliminates the 28-day attribution window and confines marketers to a 7-day attribution window.

Approach your social media strategy with a mindset akin to managing a diverse stock portfolio. Just as you spread your investments across various stocks to mitigate risks, diversify your efforts across multiple social media channels to safeguard against potential vulnerabilities if any one platform falters.

Rather than solely focusing on individual channel performance, prioritize sustainable and incremental business growth. Achieve this by connecting with your customers where they are, guiding them through the sales funnel effectively, and fostering their engagement within the brand community.

Your strategy should encompass not only channel diversification but also strike the right balance between upper-funnel and lower-funnel campaigns to support long-term growth. You expand your overall reach potential by building your brand from the top and driving conversions at the bottom of the funnel.

This approach moves more individuals into the conversion stage while minimizing the risk of audience fatigue through continual replenishment of your retargeting pools.

The Mix: What Does A Healthy Social Strategy Look Like? 

There isn’t a singular “correct approach” to diversifying your social strategy. It’s crucial to assess your channel mix considering your business objectives, audience, capabilities, cost considerations, and the level of effort you can allocate to each platform.

However, several key questions can guide this evaluation:

• Is my brand’s social media strategy sufficiently diverse?
• Does my brand allocate more than 75% of its social media budget to a single platform?
• Are there social channels my brand isn’t investing in that attract our audience?
• Is the upper funnel adequately addressed, or is my brand overly focused on direct response?
• Does my brand have a testing strategy to experiment with new channels and campaign types?
• Are decisions about social spending solely based on detailed performance KPIs and efficiency metrics?
• Is the choice of channel mix primarily driven by targeting and attribution capabilities rather than the potential for discovery or purchase?
• Are we experiencing diminishing returns on our social investment?

By addressing these questions, you can refine and optimize your social strategy for better effectiveness and alignment with your business goals.

To identify the essential qualifications for a robust and varied social mix, consider this: deliberate, platform-specific strategies implemented across three or more adequately funded platforms. Given that your customers are likely utilizing various platforms to discover new brands and explore products, the conversion paths have become intricate, and non-linear, and intersect multiple channels, disrupting the conventional marketing funnel.

Despite the increasing complexity of the customer journey, your brand’s customer experience must accomplish seemingly contradictory objectives. It should present a seamless and consistent feel across channels while remaining organic and suitable for each specific platform.

Employing the same strategy across all platforms exposes your brand to vulnerabilities. Different platforms entail varied user expectations, and a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t translate well. What resonates on Instagram might appear overly produced on TikTok, and clever copy fitting Twitter’s vibe could come off as condescending on Facebook.

Diversification goes beyond mere presence; it involves establishing your brand in a manner tailored to the nuances of each specific platform and its community. Furthermore, your social media strategy cannot be deemed diverse if the majority of your budget is concentrated in one place. Simply being “on the platform” is insufficient.

The Money: How Do You Build A Diversified Social Budget?