Harley-Davidson is known to have one of the most active social media programs of any major brand, but the use of mobile marketing by Route 66 Harley-Davidson was exceptionally impressive.
At Christmas time in 2011, the local Oklahoma Harley-Davidson dealership, Route 66 Harley-Davidson, decided to launch a social media campaign, designed by 7 Media Group, that took advantage of the growing number of mobile users. The holidays are always a time for marketing innovation and that has been especially true with social media. And the 12 Days of Christmas campaign by Route 66 is a perfect example of that.
The Campaign and Goals
Route 66 had a very specific goal in mind: they wanted to maintain visibility with current customers and generate increased revenue by attracting a new customer base during the holiday season. Sounds simple enough. After all, the holidays are a great time for promoting your products since consumers are out looking to buy. But when every brand from Wal-Mart to Microsoft is promoting holiday specials, and your brand is known as a luxury item that not everyone can afford, you need to find a way to compete.
Route 66 decided they would take advantage of social media and promote a 12-day SMS campaign to their fans, followers and customers. Essentially, Route 66 created a Call-to-Action (CTA) encouraging users both in-store and online to text RT66 to a designated number. If they did, they would receive twelve days of discounts, whereby the dealership offered a 20% discount on different items each day.
For Route 66, the holidays were typically slower. People seemed to forget that there is so much more to the Harley-Davidson brand than just motorcycles. So Route 66 decided to do the most obvious thing with a social media twist: remind them!
The results were outstanding. For the items being promoted in the campaign, sales skyrocketed. For example, one of the promotions was for T-shirts. On that particular day, sales were 250% more than a normal day of business. On Helmet Day, the single-day sales equaled the previous week’s in their entirety. Furthermore, there was an increase in dealership traffic as a result, and that could easily turn into new customers down the road.
The Lessons
There are a few important takeaways from the social media and mobile marketing techniques used by Route 66.
Always Use a Call-to-Action
For Route 66, it was simply encouraging social media users and customers to opt-in. Where was the incentive? They were receiving discounts. Your CTA’s should be direct, clear and require little from the customer, regardless of what your campaign is.
Campaigns, emails, posts, and anything else you can think of with CTA’s often see at least twice as much engagement as those without. Don’t rely on people to take that next step on their own – help them out!
Cover All Your Bases
Route 66 engaged customers and fans both in-store and on social media. Why? Because choosing one or the other no longer applies when you want to have a successful campaign. As the promotion approached, Route 66 needed to ensure that every avenue through which they could engage with their audience was covered and covered thoroughly. So next time you are putting together a campaign – regardless of its nature – be sure you reach out to your leads on every avenue and do it often.
Keep Them Coming Back
Route 66 had twelve promotions over twelve days leading up to Christmas. (The campaign ran from December 12-24.) Users could opt-in at any time, and the campaign was promoted simultaneously with the live event. Don’t stop promoting your campaigns once they have started. People hate the idea of feeling like they missed out, and if you can put together a longer campaign that gives people a chance to take advantage of your offer, you stand to generate a much greater return than if you create a campaign that is somewhat exclusive.
Keep It Simple
Sure, a fancy, multi-layered campaign might wow your audience, but what it has in flash it lacks in simplicity. Simple is good. People like the idea of taking one step and reaching the finish line. Making your clients jump through hoops creates a disincentive to participate. Do you think Route 66 would have seen the same success if customers had to go online, create an account, fill out a survey, print coupons and, after all that, be in the store on the right day to redeem it? Probably not. This is a method that deters a lot of people and can be much more expensive. So, put yourself in the customer’s shoes and ask yourself, really, if you would participate in the promotion.
By engaging an audience on social media and creating a simple, straightforward campaign, Route 66 was able to do exactly what they set out to do. The goals were clear from the start and the methods were easy for both Route 66 and the customer. The results speak for themselves.
Have you tried your hand at a mobile marketing campaign? Was it successful? Why or why not? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Social Equity: The Effect of Social Media on Your Brand
/by Corey PadveenThe direct impact that social media can have on brand equity translates into a significant boost in Social Equity.
There are three key areas of focus when one looks at the impact social media has on a brand’s image: reputation and crisis management, customer service, and market influence. Social marketing has quickly become one of the cornerstones of increasing a brand’s value in each of these categories, and the results are increased Social Equity for a business in both the short- and long-term.
Reputation and Crisis Management on Social Media
The power of social media can make or break a company’s reputation. Peer-review sites are among the most trusted in the industry, and a poor reputation here can mean a fast downfall of your brand. Managing your brand on social media can significantly boost your Social Equity.
People look to engage with a brand, particularly in the time of a crisis, and if you are listening and conversing with these users, you not only quell any unease customers might have, but you have the opportunity to turn these people into brand advocates.
By carefully monitoring and managing your brand’s reputation in real-time on social media, you eliminate much of the risk of bad press being out there and not even being aware of it.
Customer Service on Social Media
This is a relatively new concept referred to as Social Care. In a recent study by Nielsen and NM Incite, results showed that one-third of active social media users prefer to engage with brands on social networks in order to deal with questions or complaints as opposed to conventional methods of customer service (e.g. by phone).
The ability to engage with your audience on multiple platforms adds to both your brand’s transparency and approachability. These are both crucial to developing customer loyalty and, in turn, building your Social Equity.
There are plenty of services, like Klout, Kred or PeerIndex, that aim to measure a brand’s influence on social media. Influence is of ever growing importance, particularly when it comes to brand equity. Building your industry influence and establishing your brand as the foremost expert in your vertical has never been easier than it is with the strategic use of social media.
Using multiple networks and implementing a methodical engagement program can quickly help you boost your credibility to a much wider audience than ever before. Furthermore, it can be done much faster than ever before. The results? Increased brand trust and subsequent business and Social Equity.
Brand and reputation management are of ever growing importance. The ability for an international set of consumers to share opinions, complaints and praise of brands with one another has never been easier. With the right strategy in place (and a good product never hurts!) it will not be long before you see the impressive results from your efforts in terms of Social Equity.
How do you manage your brand’s reputation online? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Social Media Case Study: Honda
/by Corey PadveenHonda was looking for a way to promote their new CR-V to a specific demographic, and they found that the best way was through Pinterest.
So how do you market to them?
The Campaign
In 2012, Honda decided to take advantage of the growing addiction to Pinterest among young adults to market their brand. How? By making people stop (for a whole day)! The #Pintermission campaign was intended to get influencers fitting the targeted demographic to stop using Pinterest for 24 hours and go out to live life. This is the aura Honda aimed to cultivate with the new CR-V, and this campaign was how they got that message across.
What was the reward for not pinning? Well, Honda reached out to a group of 5 key influencers and asked them to stop pinning for one day. In return, Honda offered them $500 to put towards making one of their dream pins a reality. Each of the five users was given a board on a designated Honda Pinterest page and asked to pin about activities they dreamed of doing. The reward money for not pinning over the course of 24 hours was then to be put towards making one of these dream activities a reality.
So how did the campaign do? Nearly 5 million users were exposed to the Pintermission boards. Furthermore, these five pinners managed to garner over 5,000 repins and 2,000 likes in a very short time frame. And what’s most impressive? There were over 15 million impressions on different media platforms. That’s a lot of exposure for Honda.
The Lessons
Some of the most important lessons from this social media case study appear to be counter-intuitive when it comes to marketing and advertising. But the proof is in the numbers; this method works.
Similar to our social media case study on Kotex, Honda reached out to influencers on Pinterest in the hopes that their reach would mean a viral campaign. Once again, this method proved to be a winner.
Influencers can take your campaign to the next level. Honda reached out to five people. Five. Granted, they have an internationally-recognized brand to fall back on, but they still attained those numbers with little effort. The brunt of the reach was due to the fact that these pinners had 6- and 7-figure follower counts.
Never ignore the power of influence on social media. Your average high-school senior can have more social clout than the most powerful executives in the world. Keep that in mind.
Make It Easy for Others to Do the Work
Apart from creating the #Pintermission campaign and the designated boards for the five pinners, Honda did not have much involvement in the evolution and growth of the campaign. They simply asked that they be included as collaborators on the individual pin boards in order to garner exposure.
There were no fancy apps or special requirements for the pinners to qualify, they simply offered five people a chance to win $500 (that’s right, the campaign only cost $2,500 plus some time) for not using Pinterest. After that, it was entirely up to the participants to provide the content.
By making a simple, straightforward campaign, Honda managed to reach audiences far beyond expectations and for minimal cost. When you open the door for others to collaborate on social networks, you can very easily decrease the costs of running a campaign.
Honda did not, at any point in their campaign, try to sell a car. That was not what this campaign was about. The CR-V is intended to get people off the couch and outside to experience life. This campaign was about making people realize that, and having Honda to thank.
By creating a campaign that promoted the spirit of their product, and linking that product to the campaign, very superficially, Honda managed to capture the attention of a massive portion of their target demographic.
One of the most important marketing rules when it comes to social media is to avoid selling (at least, in most cases). People are on social networks to engage, not to be bombarded with promotional offers. Honda recognized that and their success is the proof that it worked.
What is your favorite aspect of the Honda #Pintermission campaign? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
What are ‘Targeted Tweets’ and How Should You Use Them?
/by Corey PadveenTargeted tweets were recently announced by Twitter, and it is still a little unclear as to what they are and how targeted tweets can be used.
We have all heard of Promoted Tweets – essentially, these are tweets designed to reach a broader audience based on a select criteria picked by the user paying for the ad. Well, this next generation of Promoted Tweets takes targeting your Twitter audience to a whole new level. With targeted tweets, marketers can take a wealth of new steps to increase engagement and conversion rates. Namely, tweets can be targeted by location, platform (e.g. mobile) and even outside an account’s follower base.
This can mean a lot as far as Twitter marketing is concerned. Below are a few things to consider when it comes to advertising and marketing your brand on Twitter with the new targeted tweets.
Promote for an Audience in Mind
Promoted Tweets, as they were originally designed, were intended to reach a broader audience, and not much else. Thus, tailoring your tweets for a specific audience would not necessarily do much good seeing as how you did not have control over those viewing your message. Targeted tweets changes that.
Now, as noted above, you can target your content to a very specific audience. Therefore, you should not be sending out the generic promotional 140-character message. Pick your audience based on the given criteria and write a message for them. People do not simply want to see a piece of advertising from a brand on Twitter. They want to feel like a brand is talking directly to them. So write for your audience. You’d be surprised at the success you find – initial reports are showing engagement rates of 11%. That’s high by any standards.
Get Mobile
Targeting messages by platform means that you can now advertise to people on the go. That’s a whole new feature for Twitter. Sure, their smartphone app is great for on-the-go users, but for marketers, there was no real way of marketing directly to smartphone users – until now.
The ability to send targeted tweets to mobile users means that you can now create mobile campaigns specifically for Twitter. And, considering the fact that the pricing scheme for these tweets is based on clicks, you don’t have to worry about spending on a mobile-oriented campaign that is seen on desktops.
Along with these new changes on the frontend comes some new features in the backend. The analytics featured with these targeted tweets means that you can be monitoring the progress and success of different campaigns in real time. It might be a CPC-styled campaign, but you need to pay attention to your insights!
With the new targeting abilities of promoted tweets, you need to be constantly reshaping and evolving your campaigns in order to reach the largest, relevant and targeted audience available. These analytics help you do that and they help you in a timely fashion. So instead of the set-it-and-forget-it mentality that many marketers take to social campaigns, keep an eye on your analytics and see how you can further optimize your targeting strategy to get even more out of your Twitter marketing efforts.
These are some exciting changes for Twitter. The ability to create targeted tweets means that marketers can now go a step further with their Twitter marketing and advertising strategies. Just when people thought Twitter was at a standstill, they release an exciting new feature.
Do you plan on using Twitter’s new targeted tweets feature? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Social Media for Small Business [INFOGRAPHIC]
/by Corey PadveenThere is no shortage of benefits when it comes to social media for small business.
There is a common misconception that social media is a tool best used by big businesses and multinational corporations. While it’s true that some of the best and most recognizable case studies happen to be from major brands, there is plenty of use when it comes to social media for small business. And that goes for both full-scale and small-scale programs.
Social marketing is a growing trend in all verticals and in businesses large and small. Each day, new businesses are adopting a social media program and seeing tremendous results. However, adoption is taking longer for some than for others, and understandably so. Social media for business is not fully understood by everyone and not a simple “plug-and play” style of marketing. That is particularly true when it comes to social media for small business. With all that small business owners need to manage and tend to, social media does not always make the cut. That’s a shame, because the benefits when it comes to social media for small business can be just as great, if not greater, than all those major case studies mentioned above.
Essentially, social marketing can level the playing field and place small businesses in a category where they never thought they were competitive. It also opens a new set of markets and potential that would have otherwise been closed off.
This infographic breaks down some of the more popular uses of social media for small business, where these companies are seeing some notable results and a few good lessons to take away if you are planning to incorporate social into your marketing strategy.
Take a look at the infographic and let us know how you or a colleague’s small business is using social media! Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Effective SEO Tips For Optimizing Content On Your Page
/by Corey PadveenContent that cannot be linked back to is not going to be useful to your business or SEO at all.
The same goes for content that you can’t share. Content is important for the search engines these days, especially with all the changes being made.
This is especially true with the Penguin and Panda updates. Creating content these days has to not only come across as attractive to real customers and visitors, but it needs to be attractive to search engine robots.
Here are a few of the many tips to help you get both objectives met in your content.
Length of Content
No matter what you’re writing, from articles to blog content, you want to make sure they are longer than 300 words. This is because anything less than that is going to be hard to get basic information across. You need more than 300 words to explain a product or service, and writing more gives you a better chance to do so. Web pages are ranked for the value and information they bring to the table.
The longer the content you write, the better it is for your site and for SEO purposes. However, don’t get out of line with writing long content. A good rule of thumb is anything from 300-1000 words.
Avoid Duplicate Content
There’s nothing worse that writing the same articles over and over again for your site. You shouldn’t have the same two pages on your website and if you do happen to have duplicate content, this is going to be frowned upon by the robots crawling your site.
However, if duplicate content can’t be avoided, be sure you use robots.txt to prevent them from going to a particular page.
Use Semantic Techniques or LSI for Your Writing
It’s always good to use variations of keywords such as phrases or synonyms that can relate to the primary keyword. For instance, if you have a website that is dedicated to engines, you want to have content and phrases in your content that relate to engines.
Maybe talk about some of the engines you deal with. Using these phrases here and there on your website is going to allow you to reinforce how relevant your website really is.
Getting to the Technicalities
You will need to have title tags that are going to be well thought out for SEO purposes. Make sure it stays below 70 characters and you should always use your primary keyword in the title. The main headlines in your page are the H1 tags and these should be descriptive and get to the point. Subheadings can also help your content flow a lot easier.
Social Equity: Blogging and Your Business
/by Corey PadveenBlogging was one of the incipient forms of social media marketing, and it adds a great deal of Social Equity to your business.
Essentially, a blog is a lead generator. People are arriving at your site because you have information they want access to. And if done right, a blog can mean a tremendous increase in business and, subsequently, Social Equity.
The Power of Blogging
While any form of social media marketing is going to require an investment of time and resources, blogging requires a little bit more. Considering you are developing original, lengthier content, it is not surprising that you will need to ramp up your investment and efforts for a blog to function at maximum capacity. But the payoffs can be outstanding.
According to surveys conducted by the inbound marketing experts at HubSpot, blogs can be more powerful than any of your other social activities when it comes to generating business. Their findings showed that 92% of companies blogging multiple times per day acquired a new customer through their blog. And for those companies that simply have a relatively active blog – 57% of those businesses acquired a customer with it. Furthermore, 81% of marketers agreed that their blog was useful to business development and lead generation.
With regards to inbound marketing, perhaps the most surprising statistic was that companies that blog have 97% more inbound links than those that do not. When you consider the added advantage of social link-building, this is a very important statistic.
Social Equity of Blogging
As noted above, Social Equity is derived very directly with blogging. Furthermore, there is an indirect value added to your business from blogging.
With regards to the direct Social Equity, a blog generates leads and business. The ability to acquire new clients directly from your website means that the aforementioned investment blogging requires can be recouped from the direct impact it will have on your business alone.
The indirect impact blogging has on Social Equity is tremendous. Blogging, more so than any other form of social media marketing, enables you to establish yourself as an expert and leader in your industry. You know everything there is to know about your business. How can you show that to people before you acquire them as a client? Blogging is the best means of achieving this. Showcasing your value as an expert to your market is reflected in an added value to your business.
It is clear that blogging can do wonders for your business. With time and devotion, a blog can significantly impact the value of your business in a very positive way. Blogging is amongst the strongest methods of garnering Social Equity.
Have you seen a value added to your business as a result of blogging? How so? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
Social Media Case Study: Harley-Davidson
/by Corey PadveenHarley-Davidson is known to have one of the most active social media programs of any major brand, but the use of mobile marketing by Route 66 Harley-Davidson was exceptionally impressive.
The Campaign and Goals
Route 66 had a very specific goal in mind: they wanted to maintain visibility with current customers and generate increased revenue by attracting a new customer base during the holiday season. Sounds simple enough. After all, the holidays are a great time for promoting your products since consumers are out looking to buy. But when every brand from Wal-Mart to Microsoft is promoting holiday specials, and your brand is known as a luxury item that not everyone can afford, you need to find a way to compete.
Route 66 decided they would take advantage of social media and promote a 12-day SMS campaign to their fans, followers and customers. Essentially, Route 66 created a Call-to-Action (CTA) encouraging users both in-store and online to text RT66 to a designated number. If they did, they would receive twelve days of discounts, whereby the dealership offered a 20% discount on different items each day.
For Route 66, the holidays were typically slower. People seemed to forget that there is so much more to the Harley-Davidson brand than just motorcycles. So Route 66 decided to do the most obvious thing with a social media twist: remind them!
The results were outstanding. For the items being promoted in the campaign, sales skyrocketed. For example, one of the promotions was for T-shirts. On that particular day, sales were 250% more than a normal day of business. On Helmet Day, the single-day sales equaled the previous week’s in their entirety. Furthermore, there was an increase in dealership traffic as a result, and that could easily turn into new customers down the road.
The Lessons
There are a few important takeaways from the social media and mobile marketing techniques used by Route 66.
For Route 66, it was simply encouraging social media users and customers to opt-in. Where was the incentive? They were receiving discounts. Your CTA’s should be direct, clear and require little from the customer, regardless of what your campaign is.
Campaigns, emails, posts, and anything else you can think of with CTA’s often see at least twice as much engagement as those without. Don’t rely on people to take that next step on their own – help them out!
Cover All Your Bases
Route 66 engaged customers and fans both in-store and on social media. Why? Because choosing one or the other no longer applies when you want to have a successful campaign. As the promotion approached, Route 66 needed to ensure that every avenue through which they could engage with their audience was covered and covered thoroughly. So next time you are putting together a campaign – regardless of its nature – be sure you reach out to your leads on every avenue and do it often.
Keep Them Coming Back
Route 66 had twelve promotions over twelve days leading up to Christmas. (The campaign ran from December 12-24.) Users could opt-in at any time, and the campaign was promoted simultaneously with the live event. Don’t stop promoting your campaigns once they have started. People hate the idea of feeling like they missed out, and if you can put together a longer campaign that gives people a chance to take advantage of your offer, you stand to generate a much greater return than if you create a campaign that is somewhat exclusive.
Sure, a fancy, multi-layered campaign might wow your audience, but what it has in flash it lacks in simplicity. Simple is good. People like the idea of taking one step and reaching the finish line. Making your clients jump through hoops creates a disincentive to participate. Do you think Route 66 would have seen the same success if customers had to go online, create an account, fill out a survey, print coupons and, after all that, be in the store on the right day to redeem it? Probably not. This is a method that deters a lot of people and can be much more expensive. So, put yourself in the customer’s shoes and ask yourself, really, if you would participate in the promotion.
By engaging an audience on social media and creating a simple, straightforward campaign, Route 66 was able to do exactly what they set out to do. The goals were clear from the start and the methods were easy for both Route 66 and the customer. The results speak for themselves.
Have you tried your hand at a mobile marketing campaign? Was it successful? Why or why not? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
6 Blogging Tips for Maximum Engagement
/by Corey PadveenBlogging can be a huge asset to your website and business, but only if it engages your readers.
Engagement is crucial if you want your blog to succeed. Indexing thousands of blog posts is great, but only if there are people showing up to read and share them. So, how do you go about optimizing your blog for maximum engagement?
Below are 6 helpful blogging tips that you can use to increase engagement with your audience.
1. Write What You Know
This may seem like a given. After all, if you know about wine, you’re not necessarily going to start a blog about brain surgery. (Unless you’re a brain surgeon with a phenomenal palate.) And as long as you write about what you know, it will not be long before your audience perceives you as an expert and begins to engage with your content.
On the other hand, writing ignorantly will turn your audience off, and you’ll have a tough time getting them to stick around or come back for more.
2. Integrate Your Social Channels
It should be easy for your audience to share your content. If they like what they see, they should be able to easily share it with their friends. This is the viral effect and it is one of the fastest ways to build your audience (and clout). So when you build your blog, make it social friendly. Each post should have the ability to be shared right from the page. (ShareThis and Shareaholic are great integrations for this.)
Be sure you know who you are writing for and use a rhetoric appropriate for them. Going back to the example of the brain surgeon, the doctor surely knows a lot of technical jargon, and that would be great if he or she is writing for the medical community. But if the posts are intended for you average patient audience, then using latin phrases and medical terminology may not be the best option. You want to be sure that the audience you are writing for is able to relate to the content. Otherwise, how could they be engaged? They don’t understand!
4. Address Important Issues
When people read blogs, they are looking for a few specific things. The overall theme of these things: value. If I am going to take time out of my day to read your blog, I need to know that I am getting something out of it. So when you start blogging, consider writing about a few of the following:
These are just a few of the hottest topics to cover when writing a blog. These types of posts see much higher engagement and are typically what people are looking for when they stumble upon your post organically.
5. Be Original
There are billions of indexed pages on the web and hundreds of millions of blogs. Chances are, unless you are a Nobel Prize-winning theorist, other people are talking about the same topic you are. So think carefully about what angle you want to use when approaching your topic, and emphasize what will make you stand out from the crowd. You might be saying the same thing as a lot of others, but your idea isn’t just X, it’s X plus Y. When people see something they haven’t seen before, or even see something familiar in a different light, they are going to be intrigued.
6. Close with a Call-to-Action
These are just a few helpful pointers that you can apply to your blogging to increase engagement. There is plenty more that can be done, but each of these methods is shown to give engagement a boost.
Which of these tips do you think is most beneficial to increasing blogging engagement? Can you think of others? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
How Social Media Can Help Your Business [INFOGRAPHIC]
/by Corey PadveenSocial media can mean big things for your business, and the numbers are there to show it.
Considering all the literature, statistics and case studies that exist to show how beneficial social media can be for your business, there are still marketers out there that are hesitant to adopt it. Whether it is a question of not knowing how to use it, or not understanding how to measure it, people still seem to be having a tough time crossing that last hurdle when it comes to implementing a fully integrated social media strategy.
Every second a brand does not have a presence on social media, it is losing out. There is an international conversation taking place and people want to hear from you! Don’t believe us? This infographic gives a short, sweet breakdown of just how active social media is and gives a good indication of how important social media can be for your business.
Read through the information and let us know which statistic you think is the most important when it comes to building your business through social media. Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!
The 2013 CMO Survey: Marketing and Social Media Highlights
/by Corey PadveenThe marketing and social media highlights of The 2013 CMO Survey have revealed quite a few intriguing things to look forward to.
Below are a few of the highlights (both in regards to social media and marketing in general) from the most recent report and some insights into what these findings mean.
A New Marketing Focus
There were a few key takeaways outside of social media that are important to note. One common theme prevailed throughout the entire report: there is a shift in the approach marketers are taking in order to achieve their goals.
There was a 28% increase in the emphasis on a diversification strategy. Furthermore, the most important strategy for marketers in the coming year is to increase organic growth. This could mean and helps explain the major upward shift in the importance of social media marketing. Organic growth requires wide, viral reach, and few if any other marketing techniques offer it in the same way as social.
Marketers in all sectors except for B2B-Product (B2C-Product/Service, B2B-Service) plan to increase marketing spending in the coming year. And, perhaps the most important finding with regards to spending, is that spending on traditional marketing and advertising is plummeting.
The Importance of Social Media
The CMO Survey introduced some figures that were as shocking as they are important (particularly for social media marketers). For marketers all over the world, in some of the largest companies on the planet and a wide array of verticals, social media is essential. In fact, it is going to be a cornerstone of effective marketing strategies in a very short timeframe.
Within five years, social media is expected to be, on average, 22% of marketing budgets. In fact, right now social media accounts for 8% of marketing spending and in the next twelve months, it is expected that social media will account for nearly 12% of marketing budgets.
What’s more, marketers are finally starting to understand the importance of a diverse return on investment (ROI) measurement system. There is such a high return from a social media marketing program, yet there has, to date, been a focus solely on financial returns. While these are important, it is crucial that marketers understand that they are only one of the many types of returns offered. Below is a breakdown of the measurement criteria for social media, and how those criteria are shifting.
These are just a few of the impressive highlights from the report. To download a full version of the report, click here. Give it a read and see if there is anything that stands out to you!
Which of these findings do you find most shocking/surprising/important? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!