Marketers to spend more on Social Media in 2010

Jan 22, 2010 by Dan Taylor    1 Comment     Posted under: Social Media

According to a new survey published by Alerian, two thirds (66%) of marketing professionals plan on allotting more in their budgets for social media engagement. 40% of respondents indicated that they’ll shift more than one-fifth of their ‘traditional’ direct marketing budgets towards digital, interactive, or social channels.

Additionally, more than two thirds (67%) of marketers surveyed indicated that social media engagement is either “increasingly important” or “critical to success”.

And it looks like marketers are also looking for data to back up their investment in social media. Thirty six percent indicated that they plan to invest in social media monitoring and analysis tools. Additional marketing techniques that marketers will be or planning on investing in:

Multi-channel campaign management: 51%
Individual email marketing: 55%
Customer analysis and reporting: 55%
Engaging individuals on their websites: 57%

Alterian CEO, David Eldridge, said, “2010 marks the start of the digital decade for marketing. Untargeted and irrelevant marketing techniques are now redundant and the results of this survey show many in the industry recognize this. The one thing to remember, however, is that investment in Social Media Marketing is futile without adequate measurement.”

With the planned spending spree, you might expect that marketers have been doing their homework, and truly know what they’re getting into. Well, think again, as only 6% responded that they are “extremely prepared” to take advantage of the wide variety that digital and social media tools represent as part of their overall marketing/customer engagement strategy. The next leap finds 19% are “very prepared”, with 35% “prepared enough”, 34% “minimally prepared” and 5% “not prepared at all. Looking at the numbers, that makes up a total of 39% (over one-third) of all respondents either “minimally” or “not” prepared at all.

Additional stats:

• 51% of marketers are expending either a “fair amount” or “significant amount” of effort to ensure integration of communication strategies. Some 31% are making “some effort,” and 7% are making “no effort” at all.
• 58% of companies incorporate clickstream/web analytics data into customer/email databases.
• 69% of marketers work with three or more separate suppliers––and 23% work with seven or more suppliers––in order to achieve all of their marketing objectives.
• Most marketers have difficulty coordinating resources across their digital and direct marketing agencies: 72% cite that level of difficulty between “neutral” to “very difficult.”

“Engaging with customers is becoming paramount and the yardstick by which we measure those brands that survive and those that don’t. Marketers now need to appeal to the individual and engage with customers on a one-to-one basis. The easiest way to achieve this is by investing in Social Media Marketing and Social Media Monitoring, and by embracing the web,” states Eldridge.

The Alterian Annual Survey 2009 sampled 1,068 marketing professionals primarily based in North America and Europe between October 1 and December 3, 2009.