Neworld, Great relationships build great brands

Welcome to another instalment of our digital and social media marketing review aimed at keeping digital marketers on their toes in 2020. In recent months, Mark Zuckerberg, recovering from multiple fines and sittings in front of the US Congress, delivered the keynote speech for Facebook’s 2019 conference with an emphasis on building a more privacy focused social media platform. Given Facebook’s track record, and the degree to which many platforms have become embedded in social life, it’s not surprising that privacy continues to permeate 2019’s social media marketing statistics. We are also seeing privacy becoming a point of contention between the users and creators of social media.

2019 Social Media Marketing Statistics

In 2019, 86% of Irish consumers stated that they were concerned about how companies used their personal data (Deoitte, 2019), despite these privacy concerns, IPSOS (2019), found that our usage of social media networks continued to rise.

• Usage of Facebook remained stable in Ireland with 66% of the population continuing to use the platform with 64% of this group logging on daily.
• Instagram usage increased by 2% to stand at 43% in 2019.
• New kid on the block TikTok was used by 6% of the Irish population in 2019. Of that group, 43% used the platform daily indicating a higher daily usage rate than Twitter (41%), Pintrest (14%), LinkedIn (15%) and Reddit (10%).

Social Media and Purchase Decision

According to PwC (2019), these platforms are increasingly influencing consumer purchase decisions in Ireland with Gen-Z and Millennial groups in particular using social media to:

• find purchase inspiration
• read product reviews
• make direct purchases

PwC’s study additionally found that social media had a particularly strong influence on consumer decision making in high-involvement industries.

• 51% of Irish consumers stated that their fashion purchases in 2019 had been influenced by social media.
• 49% said that their tech purchase decisions had been influenced by social media in 2019.
• Meanwhile, 36% reported similar influences on travel purchase decisions.
• Finally, 30% claimed their food purchase decisions had been influenced by social media.

In response to these trends, key names in the fashion industry, such as pure-play fashion group Boohoo, have increasingly adapted their marketing activities to rely heavily on social media strategies including influencer marketing, collaborations and, most interestingly, TikTok takeovers.

Social Media Platform: Tik Tok

Usage of ByteDance owned TikTok has taken off in Ireland in particular amongst the Gen-Z cohort. Aside from Boohoo Group, brands have been relatively slow to establish a presence on the platform, however, the app launched its paid advertising tool in 2019 which means this is likely to change.

• 90,000 Irish adults over 15 used TikTok every day in 2019 (IPSOS, 2019).
• 85% of people globally have said that videos help them to connect more effectively with brands (Renderforest, 2020).
• 85% of marketers used video marketing tools in 2019 up from 81% in 2018 (Renderforest, 2020).
• Informative videos get more engagement online than entertaining or promotional content (Renderforest, 2020).

Based on these stats it’s clear that video is here to stay and that marketers are taking full advantage of this. Additionally, it’s safe to say that the users and creators of social media platforms will have to continue to engage with the concept of privacy and the trade offs we face when we choose to benefit from the services offered to us through these sites. If you want to compare these insights to last year’s, you can check our our 2018 review here »