According to the annual worldwide survey of content management, email marketing, web analytics, social media monitoring and much more, company Alterian, 66% of 1068 surveyed marketing professionals will invest more in social media marketing in the next 12 months.
This of course does not mean that 66% of respondents will increase their marketing budgets: 40% of the 66% that will spend more in social media marketing, and I quote, “said they would be shifting more than a fifth of their traditional direct marketing budget towards funding their social media marketing activities”.
The survey also found that 67% of respondents feel social media is either ‘increasingly important’ or ‘critical to success’.
There is also good news for the vendors of social media marketing platforms, especially those that are into social media monitoring and analysis: 36% of respondents said they will be investing in these tools.
In case you wonder why: according to Alterian, it “reflects the growing understanding that a social media marketing strategy needs to be based on listening to customers and prospects and its ROI needs to be measured”.
Who said anything about the impossibility to measure the ROI of social media marketing?
I quote CEO David Eldridge on this: “Without the adequate investment in listening and measurement tools it renders any anticipated investment in social media ineffectual. The key to an effective social media strategy is listening.”
It is indeed. But not only that.
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