A new study shows that marketers are slowly making the transition to social media marketing with 63% stating they will increase their social media marketing spend in 2009.
Let’s talk about budgets.
It took a while.
Even though tens of millions of users were flocking to social media sites every day, most marketers stayed away. They either didn’t understand how to join the conversations—without sounding like shills—or they were frightened away by the prospect of associating their brands with questionable content.
But things are changing.
Companies are learning how to leverage social media and tap into the rising tide of consumers participating in social network sites, blogs, wikis and Twitter.
According to the “The ROI on Social Media Marketing” report by Aberdeen Group, sponsored by Visible Technologies, marketers have developed the tools and methodologies to drive marketing ROI by listening to and learning from customers and prospects.
The money is following the methods.
Aberdeen found that 63% of the companies in their survey (defined as best-in-class) planned to increase their social media marketing budgets this year.
Are you engaging with social media brand evangelists?
“Companies use multiple approaches to identify the individuals who wield the greatest amount of influence in any given topic area and to track changes in their influence over time,” said Jeff Zabin of Aberdeen. “Best-in-class companies engage these top influencers as brand evangelists, and then track the impact of their words and actions in terms of return on marketing investment.”
eMarketer estimates that social network advertising alone will rise over 17% this year to $2.35 billion, up from $2 billion in 2008.
social media marketing is relatively new so it will take some time for full acceptance.
Absolutely!
It is a good trend – slowly moving to social media. Sure, this is relatively new and have good perspectives, slow growth is a good sign in this case because it guarantees a stable of result.
Agreed. I firmly believe social media will only continue to grow -and quickly! Thanks for stopping by
Social media is a great place to get more traffic to your site if done correctly. However one problem I have come across is that they are difficult to convert as real customers. Most of the times the traffic from social media isn’t targeted and hence it doesn’t convert well. This is one area you need to consider before jumping onto social media marketing.
Again, agreed. It is definitely not do this and get that kind of marketing. However, I think in the long run, if done right (and not just used as an advertising platform) it has huge potential to establish thought leadership. Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment!