Social Media Marketing
Social Media marketing is here to stay. In fact, 70% of marketers plan to increase their social media budget by more than 10% this year in order to keep up with the ever-changing marketing dynamics in today’s new economy.
Where will all this spending go? According to a poll from Effie Worldwide and Mashable, the goal of the increase spending will go toward trying to find new Facebook fans. In addition to finding new fans, these marketers are also seeking to increase the number of Facebook ‘Likes’ to show social proof that their product or service is popular with others.
After increasing their presence on Facebook, the 2nd highest goal was to “Increase our presence on mobile”.
Social Media Marketing Budgets
Social media budgets are starting to rival those set aside for television commercials. Speaking on behalf of themselves and their clients, the article by Mashable stated that the group members reported that social networking would take 11.9% of their overall budget this year compared with 13% for TV. If that’s actually true, than it would represent an increase of almost $40 billion in spending on social media marketing, putting the industry to over $60 billion!
Other findings from the report:
- Brands that were cited for “effectively getting their message across via social media” include Old Spice(chosen by 15%), Pepsi (8%), Starbucks (7%) and Ford (6%).
- 50% of respondents said they use a mix of in-house and agency to handle social media outreach.
- 80% said they were planning iPad-based advertising and/or an iPad-based app this year, while 20% said they were “not planning much” of either.
- 87% said social media was “important” or “very important” to achieving their biggest marketing goal this year. http://mashable.com/2011/04/19/marketers-social-media-spend/
Without a doubt, social media marketing has become an intrical part of larger businesses marketing plans, and is something that smaller businesses should pay attention to as well.