Social media has become a critical channel for marketers. It intersects many teams, from social media managers to commerce marketers and care agents. These often siloed teams need technology to help them effectively collaborate and measure the impact of their efforts from one place.
Forrester defines social suites as:
Platforms that combine multiple social tech capabilities into a single unified offering, such as social content planning and publishing, social listening, and customer response.
According to Forrester’s Q3 B2C Marketing CMO Pulse Survey, 2024, 83% of US B2C marketing executives indicate that they are trying to consolidate their social media tools into one place, and 81% plan to evaluate their social suite in 2025. Social suites are positioned well in a market where consolidation is critical to streamline workflows between teams and also gain a consistent data view across channels.
As the social suite market has matured over the last several years, its core offerings have strengthened with unified measurement and better workflow automation. Providers differentiate with capabilities for new use cases such as employee advocacy, influencer marketing, and ratings and reviews management.
Introducing The Forrester Wave™: Social Suites, Q4 2024
To help marketers vet the right social suite provider for their needs, we’ve published The Forrester Wave™: Social Suites, Q4 2024. Marketers looking for a social suite should consider providers that:
Excel in task automation and reinvent workflows using AI. All vendors have invested in AI features, but those that differentiate are also using AI to imagine new workflows and have a clearly articulated approach and process for AI innovation.
Prioritize the customer experience. A good onboarding experience and ongoing customer support were cited as top motivators for the customers we interviewed. Select a provider that considers customer service a core business value.
Meaningfully invest in emerging use cases. Social media impacts so many different parts of the business, so you need a provider that can deliver beyond social media management. Prioritize the emerging capabilities (i.e., influencer marketing) that are most important to your business to determine which provider will most comprehensively deliver on your needs.
Forrester clients can use this report for more insight into the social suite category and the seven vendors that matter most. Schedule a guidance session to discuss how to use this Forrester Wave evaluation, and read The Social Suite Landscape, Q4 2023, to drive your selection of a social suite provider.
