In A report by Aberdeen Group recommends a series of actions organisations can take to gain the full benefit of social media marketing
Marketers now have to make do with fewer marketing dollars and resources. And they are under pressure to demonstrate measurable ROI. Increasingly they are turning towards social media to help them meet their marketing objectives, says a 2011 report by Aberdeen Group on Social Media Marketing. In fact this emerged as a distinct trend in Aberdeens survey of 453 marketers: spending on social media by all companies will increase by 2.9 times or more over this year compared with traditional media.
But there are barriers to adoption, says the report; the key obstacle being the inability to establish a business case for adopting social media. Forty-eight per cent of survey respondents cited this as their key barrier. Not having a clear mandate or support for the executive management of social media emerged the next key barrier. Aberdeen has been tracking companies and their social media marketing activities for many years now and has identified three categories of company based on various performance criteria. These categories are: Best-in-Class, Industry Average and Laggards. Best-in-Class companies form the top 20 per cent of the aggregate performance-scorers; Industry Average comprise the middle 50 per cent and Laggards form the bottom 30 per cent of scorers.
Best-in-Class marketing companies provide insights into how they leverage social media for marketing purposes and see significant gains over the companies that fall under the other two segments. Best-in-Class companies:
- Are 38 per cent more likely that than others to actively engage in and monitor social media conversations
- Have seen a 20 per cent year-on-year annual revenue improvement compared to the four per cent drop seen by Laggards
- Have forecasts of a 47 per cent increase in their sales pipeline generated by marketing, compared to just five per cent seen by Laggard companies
- Are more likely to apply customer insights captured through social media into their overall marketing efforts.
What are the Best-in-Class companies doing differently?
- They can quantify the impact of social media use on their business performance
- They have found that the most valuable metrics to use to measure social medias contribution to overall marketing efforts are the quality and quantity of new sales leads. They also monitor the source of their sales leads
- They analyse the percentage of closed business coming from leads generated and nurtured through social media and can thus establish a financial model or justification for spending
- With the business case built for their efforts, these companies have better management support compared to other companies
- They have a formal strategy devoted to social media
- They have dedicated resources devoted to managing their social media efforts
- They are more likely to invest in a combination of social media monitoring, engagement and analytics tools to measure and report customer experience data.
Capabilities are Crucial to Achieve Greater Results
Benefits of Deploying Social Media Monitoring, Engagement and Analytics Tools
Aberdeen Groups report recommends that companies take some key actions to enable their social media marketing efforts. It says organisations should establish a business case for the initiative and secure executive management support for it. Companies need also to create a formal social media strategy to integrate networks, blogging and commenting within the marketing mix. The report says companies should devote necessary organisational resources to support the social media marketing efforts, and use a combination of social media monitoring, engagement and analytics tools to not only measure leads and closures, but also to gain insights into customer experience and expectations.
Whether your company is novice or expert in the social media space, Aberdeen Research provides you with four actionable recommendations that will help you squeeze more ROI out of your social media programs.
>Download now >
>www.omniture.com/go/41719
Add new comment