As we discuss Tiktok marketing trends earlier and a few marketing trends later for this year, social commerce and accessibility are playing an important role. Let’s take a look:
Social Commerce Marketing Trends
Marketers kicked 2022 off with high hopes for social commerce that were dampened by skepticism and slow starts as the year went on. While social buying is already a success in China and India, it has been slower to catch on in the West, where shoppers are hesitant to trust social buying apps and features. At the same time, a wave of new integrations and updates may very well accelerate adoption internationally in 2023, presenting a new world of opportunities for marketers.
Twitter Shops launched in March 2022. Weeks later, TikTok and Snapchat inched closer to full in-app shopping with announcements of their respective WooCommerce and eBay integrations. By the end of summer, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and Meta had all announced integrations, updates, or test features of their own aimed at making the customer journey from browsing social to check out that much faster. Notably, YouTube introduced shoppable shorts in June, and Meta rolled out in-chat purchases and payments for Instagram. Still, unexpected setbacks, such as the shutdown of Facebook live shopping in October, show that marketers still need to stay agile when it comes to investing in new channels.
Despite some pessimism over pace, social commerce is here to stay, with sales projected to hit $1.2 trillion (accounting for 16.7% of all e-commerce sales) by 2025. As social platforms continue working to make in-app purchases easier throughout 2023, each update will allow marketers and brands to get creative with customer experiences as they capture impulse buys. And as more consumers make their first in-app purchases in 2023, building trust through social proof, influencer marketing, social customer service, and multi-channel purchase options will be even more crucial.
Across markets, brands need to get creative with new platform features while emphasizing the legitimacy, value, and quality of in-app shopping
Accessibility Marketing Trends
About three in every 20 people worldwide live with disabilities, yet excluding them from marketing plans has long been the norm. From ads devoid of visibly disabled people to unusable websites and apps, the industry has a history of overlooking the largest minority group in the world. Those standards are slowly changing as more companies are implementing higher accessibility standards as part of their wider DEI efforts.
Thanks in part to subtitle-embracing Gen-Z, closed captions are a regular sight across Instagram Reels and TikToks, which both began offering auto-captioning features in 2021. In 2022, Instagram rolled out auto-generated captions for in-feed videos, while TikTok introduced the option to toggle auto- captions on and off. Meanwhile, LinkedIn began offering real- time captioning for the platform’s Audio Events.
To help the marketers behind the scenes, Google expanded its inclusive marketing resource All In to cover disability inclusivity and accessibility. And on the PR front, artists Beyoncé and Lizzo demonstrated how to approach missteps when they apologized and removed a slur targeting disabled people from their songs.
Accessibility will continue to be a hot topic in 2023 as the progress made has revealed how much further there is to go. A 2022 Business Disability Forum survey of disabled consumers found that 42% of respondents couldn’t complete an online purchase because of inaccessible websites or apps. Forty-seven percent were unable to find information about a product’s accessibility features.
For social marketing, Twitter is set to roll out image description reminders, is working on a closed captions toggle, and is exploring expanded alt-text and captioning features. We’ll likely also be seeing platforms investing in more accurate auto-captioning for video as well as live and audio-only events and making accessibility options more visible. For in-person experiences, marketers should pay special attention to the accessibility of spaces and get creative with multi-sensory experiences, giving consumers the chance to sample products and interact with products. Finally, when it comes to disability representation in content, 2023 will come with even more casual inclusion of disabled people in advertising that doesn’t center on disability.
Haven’t thought about accessibility in marketing yet? Consumers are continuing to demand more inclusivity and representation from marketers, which is why it’s imperative to be proactive about implementing solutions.
