Terrakon Blog

Okay, time to give props.

Econsultancy, with the support of Online Marketing Summit, have gone and done a good thing.

They produced and published their “Value of Social Media Report”  and it makes me want to give them a round of applause, a high five, a fist bump – or perhaps a nice plate of brownies.  But I guess I will just pay it forward and sing their praises through this blog post because it will actually be significantly more powerful than any of the above.

Here we go… So this exciting report looks at the extent of social media marketing being carried out by over 400 client-side marketers and agencies, gathered via online surveys between December 2009 and January 2010.   [Self-Serving Sideline Comment:  Guess what?  We participated.  Yup, Terrakon gave our two cents, so you’re welcome.]

And here is the good stuff from the 60 pages of what they found.  Enjoy:

POPULARITY

• Facebook is the Web property most 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%).

• Over 2/3 of company respondents say that the amount of money spent on social media has increased since last year, while 30% say it has stayed the same.

• 81% of companies expect social media budgets to increase over the next year, while 18% expect spending to stay the same.

MEASURABILITY

• The majority of companies have difficulty measuring the return on investment from social media.  Almost 2/3 of respondents (61%) say their organizations are “poor” (34%) or “very poor” (27%) at measuring ROI.

• “Increased traffic to Web site” is the business goal that marketers are most likely to be trying to influence through social media marketing.  ¾  (74%) of companies say they use social media to increase traffic.

• “Direct traffic to Web site” is by far the metric most commonly used to measure the impact of “off-site social” media, measured by just under 2/3 of company respondents (63%).

• “More brand recognition” (64%) is the second most important business objective in terms of impact of social media.  A similar proportion of respondents (62%) cite “better brand reputation.”

• Just over half of companies (56%) say that they try to achieve “increased sales” through social media activity.  But only a quarter of companies (24%) use sales as a metric for measuring social media success.

INVOLVEMENT

• Almost 2/3 of companies (61%) say that they “have experimented with social media, but not done that much.”

• Only 25% are “heavily involved in social media” while the remaining 13% are not engaging with social media at all, and saying “we don’t do anything.”

BUDGET

• A third of companies (32%) do not spend anything on social media marketing and a further 36% spend under $5k a year.

• Just under a fifth of respondents (19%) are spending between $5-25k on social media marketing a year.

• Company respondents were also asked what proportion of their digital marketing budget was spent on social media.  On average, 6% of the total budget is allocated to social media marketing.

ROI

• More than a third (37%) of companies believe measuring ROI is “crucially important.”  More than half of marketers (58%) say that understanding ROI is “fairly important, but not crucial.”

• A third of respondents (32%) are getting “less than 1x” the return on investments from social media, with 28% getting between 1-2x return on social media.  Conversely, 13% are getting more than 5x ROI from social media.

Related Posts

1. Social Media: A Marketer’s Dream? Survey says…
2. Four Pillars Of A Great Social Media Company
3. Why Hire A Social Media Consultant?
4. Social Media Begins With Your Web Design
5. Does My Business Need Social Media Optimization Services?