84% of Marketers to Shift Portion of Direct Marketing Budgets to Social Media

By Andy Beal on January 21, 2010

84% of Marketers to Shift Portion of Direct Marketing Budgets to Social Media

According to its 7th annual survey, Alterian suggests that 66% of marketers plan to invest in social media over the next 12 months, but only 36% plan to monitor and analyze the success–or failure–of their efforts.

In fact, when you look at the breakdown, 40% of the 1,000 marketers surveyed plan to steal 20% or more of their traditional direct marketing budget to feed their new found social media marketing habit.

Considering Alterian recently acquired Techrigy, I’m sure they share my surprise–and maybe concern–that compared to the amount of spending planned for social media marketing, more is not being allocated towards actually monitoring and measuring that ROI.

This chart shows best the disparity between spend on each:

Yeah, I’m biased–I want you to use a social media monitoring tool–but really, would you consider launching an SEO campaign without having web analytics on your site? No? Then why would you spend hundreds of thousands on a social media marketing initiative, without monitoring your reach, response, and successes?

Of course, it could just be that these marketers are more thrifty than naive. After all, why spend thousands on media monitoring, when plans start at just $18 a month? A blatant plug, I know, but mama needs a new pair of shoes!

Social Media Monitoring in Just 60-Seconds. Guaranteed!

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16 comments on “84% of Marketers to Shift Portion of Direct Marketing Budgets to Social Media”

Criar site Says:

January 21st, 2010 at 2:36 pm

Great post, I learned a lot.

Lindsay Reply:
January 21st, 2010 at 4:07 pm
I was not suprised at the data because I find for the most part that companies get excited and want to be out there, and don’t take the time to listen first and build an integrated social media strategy.

At Xerox I focus on social media marketing for our Production products and monitoring and measurement is critical. Without my monitoring tool, I would be lost. I rely on it to aid my response time to critical conversations, watch trends, and report on success of our campaigns, etc.

I always hear “Social Media ROI is hard to measure” but I don’t believe that one bit. I just think people who say that aren’t using a monitoring tool
.-= Lindsay´s last blog ..Print is Dead, Long Live Print! =-.
Mike Volpe Says:

January 21st, 2010 at 4:53 pm

Measuring the ROI of social media does not require a specialized social media monitoring tool. Many marketing and web analytics tools give you the ability to measure the traffic and leads you are getting from social media, or there are multipurpose marketing systems that do lots of things – including social media marketing. All of these are options allowing you to measure the ROI of your social media efforts without buying just one tool only for social media.
Jeff Burkett Says:

January 21st, 2010 at 8:30 pm

The strength of traditional direct marketing has always been measurability. As the latest generation of direct marketing tools become a significant part of marketing strategy, it only makes sense to measure the ROI, tweek the strategy and retest to generate the most best results you can.
As we move to broaden our own marketing, I will want to know not only if we were successful, but just how much we can attribute to this new direction. Metrics have to be available to guide those assessments.
Product Channel Market Alignment Part 2 – A real story | InsuraTech Says:

January 22nd, 2010 at 10:00 am

[...] 84% of Marketers to Shift Portion of Direct Marketing Budgets to Social Media [...]
Dean Says:

January 22nd, 2010 at 10:21 am

Looks like the Social Media types will get a free pass this year (i.e. no ROI accountability). Probably a good thing. We monitor it here and its impact on generating activity on our site is squadush. Don’t hate me, just stating the facts.

I’ll grant that we are still early in the learning curve but I suspect that many companies have rushed into social media “because they need to be there” without defining what the strategy or goals are and how they will measure it.
Robert Cairns Says:

January 23rd, 2010 at 1:33 am

I am not surprised at this number since the perception in the Marketing Business is that social media marketing is easy and cheap. The reality is that in order to do it right social media marketing is hard work and take a while to establish a presence on.
.-= Robert Cairns´s last blog ..6 People In History I Would Like To Meet And Have Dinner With =-.
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January 23rd, 2010 at 4:12 am

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January 26th, 2010 at 5:54 am

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January 26th, 2010 at 5:55 am

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January 31st, 2010 at 12:51 am

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February 1st, 2010 at 6:42 am

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B2Bbloggers Newsletter — January 25th, 2010 Edition | B2Bbloggers Says:

February 1st, 2010 at 7:38 am

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February 2nd, 2010 at 4:22 am

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