New research from Deloitte Digital reveals what brands stand to gain by repositioning social at the core of brand and customer experience. Social-first brands understand the seamless shopping journeys today’s consumers demand from social media. As a result, they see increased trust, loyalty, and spend among consumers.
For years, brands have managed social media as a function of marketing, with a focus on growing share of voice through content amplification, community-building, and product advertising. Today, the enterprises with the most effective and evolved approach to social—we call them social-first brands—are seizing opportunities to drive share of culture through a more collaborative and expansive approach.
New research commissioned by Deloitte Digital1 reveals how social-first brands are repositioning social media at the core of the entire brand and customer experience, as a key driver of strategic priorities across the entire C-suite—from commerce and customer care to risk management, product development, and beyond. As a result, they’re strengthening trust, loyalty, and spend among customers—while also improving resilience, innovation, engagement, and growth for the enterprise.
For social-first brands, the value of this evolved and connected approach is hard to miss. These leading companies achieved an average revenue increase of 10.2% as a direct result of social strategies in 2022, along with other benefits.
as likely to say that social media’s value is recognized by the entire C-suite.
as likely to say that social media is recognized as a major growth catalyst for the brand as a whole.
as likely to have exceeded revenue goals by 25% or more in their B2C lines of business.
They’re achieving those results through a new spin on the three cornerstones of social business transformation: community, content, and conversion.
Back when brands first began to recognize the power of social media to enable new types of customer engagement, many began building their own communities on the leading platforms. Since then, changes in algorithms and other platform innovations—along with shifts in digital culture itself—have flipped the formula for success. Social-first brands are now focused on meeting and serving consumers in their own communities through a two-way dynamic of communication and connection. They’re also managing paid and organic tactics together in ways that help improve discovery, consistency of messages and experiences, and engagement.
as likely to say they plan to moderately or substantially increase the number of social platforms where they engage customers.
as likely to use social platforms extensively as channels for customer care/service.
This is a smart strategic shift.
However, our research showed that many brands still struggle to turn the potential of social care and other community-engagement efforts into meaningful impact due to disconnects across data, teams, and/or capabilities.
Brands have traditionally focused on processes and resources for social content creation that simply mirrored traditional, one-way marketing. Today’s social-first brands recognize that the most effective content is co-created with audiences, influencers, and creators. Some brands are going a step further by actively engaging creators in their product research and development initiatives.
as likely to say "humanizing our brand" is extremely important to their social strategy.
as likely to report their creator/influencer strategy is extremely effective.
Collaboration with customers and creators isn’t new; in fact, 40% of all brands say creator and customer content is the most important source of content for their social strategies. Brands are wise to put extra emphasis on content co-creation.
That’s because, among consumers...
Product discovery and research is no longer reserved for traditional web search engines. According to media reports of Google’s own data, 40% of Gen Z consumers turn to TikTok and Instagram for search before Google.2 Our new research demonstrates those consumers aren’t just idly looking around: They’re increasingly willing to buy products and services—even from brands they didn’t previously know—directly through social platforms.
use social media for search sometimes, frequently or very frequently.
discovered a new brand on social media in the past 12 months.
are now willing to buy directly within social media platform.
want more opportunities to discover and purchase products on social media.
As social platforms continue to expand their commerce capabilities, discoverability has become an increasingly important component of social strategies. Here too, social-first brands are leading the way.
Compared to low-maturity organizations, social-first brands are…
Social commerce trends are not only reshaping consumer shopping experiences, but unlocking new opportunities for platforms, brands, and creators. Deloitte Social Commerce and Shoppable Media Services help organizations build and scale the requisite tools and capabilities that support sustainable success in the social commerce ecosystem.
¹ Original research results in this report are based on a blind survey conducted in May 2023 by Lawless Research on behalf of Deloitte Digital. Respondents included marketing leaders at 450 US business-to-consumer companies, plus 1,000 US adult consumers. Building on this research, Deloitte Digital developed a proprietary maturity framework to define and score social media effectiveness. In this paper, we refer to the most effective 22% of respondents as “social-first brands” and the least effective 27% as “low-maturity organizations."
² Sarah Perez, “Google exec suggests Instagram and TikTok are eating into Google’s core products, Search and Maps,” Techcrunch, July 12, 2022.
