It is important for brands to use social media to improve their marketing efforts. Three in five marketers and communication professionals think social media is more important for their organisation due to economic uncertainties, according to a recent report. 34% of their total marketing budget will be spent on social media, with the majority of respondents planning to increase spends or keep them intact.
In regards to the execution of social media marketing, 61.73% are opting for in-house social media management, while 26% are outsourcing less than half of their projects. Only 2.5% of their work is fully outsourcing.
Wilson Wong, marketing director at Price.com.hk, told MARKETING-INTERACTIVE that the brand does social media internally as high efficiency, frequency and quality control are required, which outsourcing is difficult to do. It is difficult to manage an agency to help produce such content if we want to have quick production but with high quality.
Wilson Wong agrees with the head of marketing at flash coffee, who handles a lot of the social media executions in-house. Ad-hoc content hijacking current news to design is included. She said that keeping the function in house allowed for more flexibility and responsiveness to changes. The brand is growing. The brand can tailor its social media strategy and content to better meet customers' needs by doing social media in-house.
Why do brands choose to work with third parties?
Many of the marketers in Hong Kong that MARKETING-INTERACTIVE spoke to say they bank on a hybrid model
The more strategic and planning of social media is done in-house for the company. Philip Chau is the vice president and group head of marketing at Regal Hotels International.
Chau said that in-house social media teams have resources that are close to the brand. It may take more time to build and manage such a team. He said that outsourcing is more suited for short term projects as gencies can provide specific expertise in certain industries or technology that may be harder to find in-house.
Cecilia Chan, marketing director of valuation and advisory services business in Asia at Colliers, said that the company's social media projects vary from market to market, and is determined by its local marcom teams.
One beauty of outsourcing is that brands can leverage the experiences from agencies who have worked with different brands in different industries, learnt the best practices and failures from different strategies and executions in different campaigns at different social media platforms.
It's important for brands to make sure the agencies they hire understand and can carry out their brand essence with zero-mistake, Chan said.
A new trend of social media adoption in Hong Kong may be due to the dominance of artificial intelligence writing tools.
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