Social Media at Work » budgets

68% of Companies Spend Less Than $5000/Yr on Social Media Marketing

Tonia Ries — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:29:47 +0000

Econsultancy’s 59-page The Value of Social Media Report, produced by in association with Online Marketing Summit, is based on an online survey of more than 400 client-side marketers and agency respondents, which took place in December 2009 and January 2010. Findings include:

Facebook is the Web property mostly commonly used in social media, with 85% of companies using this site as part of their marketing strategy. This is followed by Twitter (77%), LinkedIn (58%) and YouTube (49%).
Almost two-thirds of respondents (61%) say their organizations are “poor” (34%) or “very poor” (27%) at measuring ROI.
Almost two-thirds of companies (61%) say that they “have experimented with social media, but not done that much.”
A third of companies (32%) do not spend anything on social media marketing and a further 36% spend under $5,000 a year.
A third of respondents (32%) are getting less than 1x the return on investment from social media.

The report is available for download from Econsultancy. (premium)

77% Moving TV Media Dollars to Social Media this Year

Tonia Ries — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:17:36 +0000

A new Forrester Research/Association of National Advertisers survey, “TV Advertising Budgets are Under Siege,” looked at 104 U.S. advertisers in 21 industries, representing nearly $14 billion in measured media budgets.

The survey found that social media, web advertising and search are stealing budgets from TV and other media. Of those surveyed, 77% said they would be moving TV dollars to social media this year; 73% plan to shift money to online advertising, and 59% will be spending more on search-engine marketing and 46% on e-mail marketing.

Full article at Media Post.

The ANA press release and links for members to access the report.

70% of Marketers Plan to Increase Budgets for Social Media Marketing

Tonia Ries — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 18:19:18 +0000

According to a Jan 2010 Econsultancy survey of more than 1,000 US and UK marketers, conducted in association with ExactTarget, 46% of companies plan to increase their marketing budgets in 2010, and 66% will increase their investments in digital marketing channels. Additionally, investments in digital marketing will increase by 17% in 2010, and will account for 24% of overall marketing budgets. Marketers who focus on “brand reputation” as a measure of marketing effectiveness are most likely to shift their budgets from traditional to digital channels.

70% of the companies surveyed plan to increase their budgets for social media marketing (e.g. Facebook, Twitter).
56% plan to increase mobile marketing budgets.
Only 17% of companies surveyed are increasing their print media budgets, compared to 41% who are decreasing spending.

ExactTarget has compiled a free research brief, which can be downloaded here (registration required).

The full report is available from Ecoconsultancy (paid).

45% of Brand Execs Say Social Networks are a Top Priority for 2010

Tonia Ries — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:30:10 +0000

According to research from the Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA), the “2010 Digital Marketing Outlook,” 81% of the brand executives surveyed expected an increase in digital projects in 2010, and one-half will be moving dollars from traditional to digital budgets.

Senior marketers reported that social networks and applications were their biggest priority for 2010, with the highest percentage (45%) rating them a top priority, followed closely by digital infrastructure. While social media marketing looks set to stay top of mind, a majority of respondents considered a range of digital activities at least “important,” with only games failing to inspire widespread interest.

More details and charts at eMarketer.

Download a PDF of the full report at Society of Digital Agencies.

Two-thirds of Marketers Plan to Spend on Social Media, 40% Don’t Feel Prepared.

Tonia Ries — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:16:49 +0000

Two-thirds (66%) of marketing professionals plan to invest in social media over the next 12 months and 40% will shift more than one-fifth of their traditional direct marketing budget toward digital, interactive, or social channels, according to an Alterian survey of 1068 marketing professionals worldwide. The majority (67%) say social media is either “increasingly important” or “critical to success.”

But only 25% of marketers say they are “extremely” or “very prepared” to take advantage of the new techniques that digital and social media represent as part of their overall marketing/customer engagement strategy, while 40% say they are “minimally prepared” or “not prepared” at all.

More highlights from the Alterian Annual Survey 2009 are at Marketing Profs.

More spending on social media in 2010

Tonia Ries — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 21:31:12 +0000

According to The Social Media and Online PR Report, published by Econsultancy in association with bigmouthmedia, 86% of companies plan to spend more money on social media in 2010, while 13% are planning to keep the same level of budget. 54% of companies say that the biggest barrier to better social media engagement is a lack of resources. Only 10% of companies are not engaging in any social media activity whatsoever. Benefits of social media include increased brand awareness (73%), increased customer engagement (71%), better brand reputation (66%), and increased communication with key influencers (62%). Lots more details at MediaPost, including stats on b2b and b2c adoption and various industries; full report can be downloaded from Econsultancy (premium).

Facebook to pass MySpace in ad spending in 2010

Tonia Ries — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:47:08 +0000

Marketers will spend $1.2 billion in paid advertising on social networks in the U.S. in 2010 — a 3.9% increase driven mainly by Facebook’s rapid growth, according to a new eMarketer forecast. Worldwide, paid social network advertising is expected to increase 12% to $2.2 billion this year, and to $2.5 billion in 2010. Facebook’s U.S. ad revenue is projected to increase from $335 million in 2009 to $450 next year, while MySpace will contract from $465 million to $360 million. That translates into a 34.7% share of spending for Facebook, compared to 28.7% for MySpace. The shift is based in large part from the site’s surging audience growth. Facebook boasts 350 million users worldwide, and in November cracked 100 million monthly U.S. visitors for the first time to become the fourth-largest Web property overall, according to comScore. MySpace’s U.S. audience, by contrast, had fallen to 64 million as of October 2009. More details in MediaPost; full (premium) eMarketer report here.

U.S. marketers plan to increase social media spending

Tonia Ries — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:40:33 +0000

According to eMarketer, the MarketingSherpa 2010 Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report, shows that U.S. marketers plan to increase social media marketing budgets in 2010. Retail and e-commerce marketers are more likely to increase social media marketing budgets next year, at 79%, followed by publishing and media at 63% and computer hardware and software companies at 55%. Education and healthcare lagged, with less than one-half of marketers in the industry planning to increase social media spending next year. Chart near bottom of this MediaPost story.

Most CMOs spend very little on social media

Tonia Ries — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:49:52 +0000

Hill & Knowlton and peer networking group the CMO Club polled 124 CMO Club members Sept. 15 and Oct. 15, 2009, and found that 85% of CMOs spend less than 10% of budgets on social media, and 55% spend 5% or less on social media, and what’s described as “non-traditional communications channels.” Club members indicated some companies are grappling with putting together social-media marketing policies internally: 31% report their companies are developing a policy; 30% say they have one. Article at MediaPost.

Social media use soars among b-to-b marketers

Tonia Ries — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 19:06:41 +0000

A survey of b-to-b and b-to-c marketing professionals by BtoB and the Association of National Advertisers shows dramatic growth in the use of social media as a marketing tactic: 66% said they are now using social media, up from 20% of respondents to the 2007 survey. Twitter ranked higher among b-to-b (70%) than b-to-c (46%) respondents, and Facebook is the most-used social media site overall (74%), and enjoys high use among b-to-b marketers (60%). Lots more detail at BtoB Online.