#BizTrends2025: Rirhandzu Shingwenyana's 3 social media trends influencing marketing in 2025

Rirhandzu Shingwenyana outlines 3 social media trends influencing marketing in 2025 (Image supplied)

Retail media and e-commerce will make most digital media worried about their future.

Social media marketing

The social media marketing has now reached a stage of maturity.

Most brands and marketers are comfortable investing in social media marketing platforms.

They are starting to understand the importance of including social media platforms like Meta and TikTok in their marketing.

Despite the challenges these platforms face, marketers and brands continue to use them strategically.

Social media marketing is no longer optional; it’s essential for building personal connections with customers.

It is an opportunity for them to connect with consumers and customers on a personal level.

So, in 2025, brands will demand marketers to further take them in their confidence that social media marketing contributes to the success of the brand’s bottom line - whatever they deem to call a return on investment in that regard.

Furthermore, marketers will have to find innovative ways to demonstrate ROAS for brands to unlock more budget for social media marketing. Show them the numbers will make sense and they will give more money to deliver even greater results.

Marketers will have to move away from using metrics such as likes, shares, and comments, to measure whether a campaign succeeds. This will sage way in to drive customers down the marketing funnel.

The bottom line will be whether consumers or customers who have engaged with the brand’s campaign on social media are converted or not, and where in the marketing funnel they drop.

Thus, understanding social media and digital marketing will be paramount for effective marketing campaigns.

Influencers marketing

Influencers will have a more profound impact on the overall success of social media and digital campaigns.

Brands will demand more accountability from influencers concerning delivery in terms of engagement and reach - not the number of followers a particular influencer has on social media.

Brands will expect case studies as part of their due diligence when selecting influencers.

Even though some brands and marketers are already doing this, the emphasis should be on insight, key outcomes, and win and lose from the previous brands they worked with.

From Macro, micro, and nano-influencers these changes will be applied across. Influencers who will bring a community for brands to integrate their products or campaigns without feeling like they are pushing these to consumers will be the leaders in the pack of the already overcrowded social media influencers space.

However, growth in the influencer space will continue to excite marketers and brands.

Retail media marketing and e-commerce

The pandemic contributed significantly to the growth of retail media because of e-commerce.

Therefore, next year will see more brands particularly those in the FMCG space try more retail media marketing.

The retail media marketing environment is growing rapidly, and more brands and marketers are warming up to try out their products in the space.

What makes retail media interesting is their ability or capability to ‘provide’ consumers and customers first-party that is precise regarding the latter’s psychographics and demographics.

This will be an opportune space for brands and marketers to harness e-commerce to target consumers interested in their products based on the data from these platforms.

This space will be the one to watch closely.

With the launch of Amazon in South Africa, Shein and Temu are disrupting the market, while Takealot is scrabbling to keep up with these international players.

Meantime the likes of Checker sixty60 and the delivery app are also building some formidable data which creates opportunities for marketing and advertising on their apps.

It will be fascinating to watch retail media's influence on the online and digital media landscape.

Storytelling and creative content a priority

The above-mentioned are not the elements to look out for when crafting a marketing mix in 2025; they are some of the influences on continued investment in social and digital media and online platforms concerning marketing.

Over and above all these, storytelling and creative content craftsmanship need to be a priority, s most of the time campaigns fail to make the set objective due to substandard creative content.