February 14, 2012
Survey Says: Social Media Efforts More Talk Than Walk
Is there something wrong with this picture? New research shows that while an overwhelming percentage of marketing executives use social media and believe in its power to help their businesses, most dedicate little in the way of human and financial resources to advance the effort.
According to a study of 106 marketing executives in North American technology companies conducted by Lopez Research for the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA):
- Ninety percent of marketing executives use social media;
- Seventy-five percent believe it has a positive effect on business;
- Nearly 90 percent spend less than 10 hours a week on social media efforts.
"It is remarkable to see that, despite their strong belief in the power of social media, over one-third of marketers are engaged in it for only five hours or fewer every week," said Rhianna Collier, vice president of SIIA’s Software Division, in a press release.
The SIIA, which serves the software and digital content industries, found that marketers are looking ahead to increasing their social media investments as they get a better handle on return on investment (ROI).
"Social media is still a relatively new method for growing a business, but marketers clearly believe it is has value and will require greater investment," said Ms. Collier. "With more marketers now applying traditional ROI metrics — such as qualified leads — to their social media efforts, they are more likely to get a clear sense of what level of investment makes sense."
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Discussion Questions
Discussion Questions: In general, do you think retailers are dedicating appropriate human and financial resources to social media? What do you think is the right mix of metrics for retailers to determine social media ROI?
Poll
I’m actually not surprised by these statistics. I think the state of the union is such that marketers know they need to be on social media, but they don’t know how to implement a campaign, and how to measure success.
ROI cannot be solely revenue-driven. Sure, you can track an increase in sales on your website via traffic from your Facebook Fan Page, but a social media effort is bigger than that. It’s about building brand awareness, increasing presence online, establishing consistency and credibility with consumers, and opening up a direct line of 2-way communication. You provide access to your brand for consumers, and a way to localize their experience with you.
Yes, tagging numbers to these goals can be difficult. But marketers should think outside of the box in terms of ROI — maybe it’s not always about hard numbers.
Social media is a definite asset, and should be integrated into your traditional marketing campaign. I wouldn’t suggest relying on it, alone. But it provides an extraordinary support system to your traditional efforts…if implemented properly.
The fact that seventy-five percent of the marketing executives believe that social media has a positive effect on business doesn’t mean they know that it does, what is working and what is not, and how to measure its impact. If they did and if the impact was significant, they would devote more time to it.
Like all advertising, there are hard and soft metrics to consider. At this point it may be difficult to measure the impact of social media on either. However, if marketers don’t develop the skill sets now to work with social media, they risk being behind those that do when the mechanisms are in place to measure the metrics.
Many executives in retail and consumer products are still missing out on the true benefits of comprehensive social media marketing. Many are still viewing social media as a nice value-added but not a necessity, and others are reading bad research to draw conclusions that are over generalized and flawed, that lead them to the wrong conclusions.
Part of the problem with marketers and social media is that most marketing groups are staffed so thinly that there is only so much time in a day to engage. Social is one of those areas of marketing that is so hands-on that it sucks more time than most people really have to devote.
I am a believer in gaining understanding and insight through personal experience, but that said, I think it’s impractical for marketers to spend more and more time in social. If they find the right social partner services, they can keep a hand in while getting the benefit of scale needed to make a difference in business results.
Most retailers are moving their social media practices ahead on “gut instincts.” Those instincts are correct in their assumption that consumers are making greater use of social media in a wide variety of ways. As with all media allocation, marketers capture the best results by segmenting their audiences, and targeting their messages to those segments.
Not all segments of the population, or categories of a retailer’s business, are quite ready for social media at this point in time. Retailers need to take the step to place social media into the overall marketing mix of traditional media.
The semi-annual Media Behavior & Influence Study from BIGinsight, providing Insights of 25,000+ adults, monitors influence on purchase for 31 different media forms. Why? Because we are living in a consumer-centric world that offers media choice — we aren’t in a media world of the 1960s with 5 different choices (radio, TV, newspaper, magazines, and direct mail) anymore, Toto.
Studies that properly measure consumer influence offer the metrics to properly allocate media.
Brands may invest more time and money in social media when they realize that that’s where the youngest adults are….
Pushing the share button on this site reveals over 300 choices for sharing information. My guess is that many of the companies’ social media could not clearly distinguish all these sources. I cannot. The point is that if your organization is using social media, then someone in your organization should know the difference. To measure the ROI you need to specifically identify the result you want from social media and then find a way to measure whether you get that result, and determine the cost of getting that result. The metrics will differ depending upon the goal. If awareness is your goal, then accessing the message is sufficient. If you want the consumers to search a site, then accessing the site is not a sufficient measurement. The appropriate metric depends upon your goal.
I’ve seen some very good social media integration between independent specialty blogs (pets, crafts/knitting, DIY home decorating, dishes/tablescaping, cooking, cycling, flower gardening, birding, etc.) and specialty retailers serving those same interests. That is still a vast uncharted territory to be explored I believe. In the past these specialty marketers often had trouble finding their most likely clients — and vice versa. No more.
Unfortunately I do not see the same benefits for many mass market retailers and national brands whose forays into social media (beyond their websites) usually seem forced and clumsy. Perhaps the synergy and necessity to use social media are just not there for a lot of businesses serving already over-stimulated mass consumers and never will be, regardless of how much money is thrown at it.
For decades, managers have been trying to associate ROI with specific marketing efforts. But honestly, isn’t it usually an undefinable mixture of things that gets customers in the door or to click their store online?
In general, the answer is not only “No” — it’s “Hell, No!”
Now, what’s the problem? Let’s start with age. Older marketers have come late to the social media game while younger marketers have grown up with it as part of the “digital wallpaper” of their lives. That’s not to say that older marketers can’t do well with social, but it is to say that won’t happen until, and unless, they let go of at least some of the “truths” that have made them successful in the pre-social media world. Thinking things like, “The message’s authority, credibility and power come from the source,” and “Clever is a reasonable substitute for engaged,” simply don’t work well in the social networking space. So … an “appropriate human resource” is a person young enough, or who thinks young enough to understand this is a new game with new rules.
As to financial resources “social media” budgets remind me an awful lot, (in a very scary way,) of “ethnic marketing” budgets. Any marketing tool that is siloed away from the main marketing effort is marginalized and therefore de facto under-resourced. I believe that social should be integrated — as in fully co-mingled — with all other marketing and business intelligence efforts and that a whole new set of metrics are needed. You get what you measure, after all, and treating a many-to-many world as though it were a one-to-many or even one-to-one effort is going to give you skewed results.
This is a marketing tool with which I’d much prefer to be a follower than a leader. In fact, a “kicking and screaming” follower. I’ve yet to see a real competitive advantage in using social media for marketing. If someday a retailer proves it works well in a big way, we’ll all go to school on their approach and jump on the bandwagon. The marketing executives polled for this report evidently feel the same way. As has been proven in the past, sometimes it’s better to be second in than first in.
An often overlooked facet of marketing with social media is training consumers. And that will require lots of retailers offering social media shopping opportunities. Without lots of retailers participating in a focused and persistent way, consumer training will be much slower and delay the progress of the medium as a selling tool.
After two years in the trenches of social media strategy, I can say with confidence the hype is over. 2011 was the year of “we’ve got to do something” and 2012 will be the year of “show me the money.” Until winning social media strategy can prove its ROI, marketers are dialing back the budgets and internalizing initiatives in a reaction to the hype with no measurable results. I get it and I consult on it with the C-Level every day.
The good news is, it’s not going away, so when you get serious about social media it will be directly tied to your online presence being diminished in Google’s eyes. “How much do I spend, what am I doing, do I internalize or outsource?” are questions best worked on with true social marketing strategists that understand the real power of effective social networking. I guess my stance is to do what you gotta’ do and when you realize your going nowhere fast, pick up the phone and start working with someone who can tell as much of what NOT to do as they can what to do.
In the supermarket channel, I’ve rarely seen much ROI or brand differentiation here. When I run focus groups, it is extraordinarily rare for people to say they visit their supermarket’s website. For this channel, it just isn’t there yet. Like some others here, I’d be waiting in the wings, ready to pounce if a successful strategy arises. As an aside, can’t resist noting that visiting my 3-year-old granddaughter, noticed she’s already about as computer literate as I am. And one of her friends was extremely frustrated when she was looking at a magazine, moving her fingertips across the page and expecting to see a new page view. Wow.
I just read today where Nike is spending more on marketing than ever before; not traditional ad spend, but social media. When interviewed, a Nike spokesperson made a statement I completely agree with and is relevant to this discussion: “We used to just push stuff out there, but now we’ve realized, it’s not what you say, it’s a dialogue.”
All retailers should look at it that way as Nike apparently has made great headway with younger consumers because of their efforts.
Social is new, still in a period of experimentation to find the “best” strategies and tactics. So in my judgment, allocated resources are appropriate. I think as more retailers tap into the wealth of social data, more precise ROI will be available.
To learn more, NRF has published the Social Retailing Blueprint.
90% use it. 75% believe it has a positive impact on business. 90% spend less than 10 hours a week on the effort.
There’s a conflicted group if I’ve ever seen one!
Let’s forget the first number because its likely false. Let’s take the second and third numbers and put them together. So, 75% believe it has a positive impact? Yet, they evidently can’t enumerate it. If they could they’d be spending more than 10 hours a week on it, right?
For now, the value of social media is talking about one’s self and believing others really want to know. They don’t. They also want to talk about themselves. There will be a lot of arrows in the back of those pioneering this media. While that’s going on, it may be a better thing to listen to others talk about themselves until someone can figure out what others want to hear.
In general, no, the right effort is not being spent. However, that does not necessarily mean the right amount of “time.” A small amount of time on the right efforts pays off more than a ton of time just randomly “tweeting.”
Metrics need to include: “Reach,” “Authority,” Influence,” and other similar sentiments. There are great tools for this. Also, having a finger on the pulse of consumer sentiment and responding quickly is key.
You know, just about every other year something new comes along and the retail talking heads make it a must have, if you are going to survive. The fact is, each of these “silver bullets” diverts attention away from what is important, and that is customer service. When are the retailers going to get back to hiring right and training right?
The ones who are doing it right don’t have to worry about hopping on the social media bandwagon, they have been there for years. It’s called “word of mouth”! Don’t waste you time on Facebook (the only real social media), spend your time running your business right and let your competition chase its tail. The key to success is work, not shortcuts. If you don’t know what you are doing, then find someone who does and put them in charge. Facebook won’t make you a genius, it will just show thousands more what you really are.
When you talk about the appropriate amount of resources given to social media, you need to take into account that most social media is not generating clear incremental return on investment; in fact, most social media is not easily measurable in and of itself. The return on investment for an improvement in customer service is clear; however, for marketing activities designed to increase brand affiliation, frequency, retention and advocacy, the results are not yet in.
So what is the appropriate amount of human and financial resources for social media? I think many retailers this year will decide that the appropriate level of spending is less than they spent in the previous 2 years. Until we are able to make a connection between the communications that we put on the web and the actions that customers take, the social media budget will continue to be under attack.
The measurement of return on investment for social media relies on the ability to identify the specific customers who are engaged in social media and what their purchase patterns were prior to their engagement on social media and afterward. As a result, I believe that much of social media marketing in the future will be dedicated to identifying the right customers and then tracking their behavior over time.
This survey focused mostly on B2B social media marketing, including emails and mobile. (About 88% of the executives questioned are business to business.)
To answer the question, I’d be interested in a comparison survey, one geared to direct to consumer marketers.
Using all the “big data” will help reveal the value. With the right data, brands/businesses can not only understand the ROI, but also can start to get beyond the functional view of loyalty into the emotional sides. Early days, but very exciting times.
I’d like to see much more of focus on the data vision and roadmap to help enable connections with individual consumers, but this area is generally misunderstood by marketers and researchers.
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I’m actually not surprised by these statistics. I think the state of the union is such that marketers know they need to be on social media, but they don’t know how to implement a campaign, and how to measure success.
ROI cannot be solely revenue-driven. Sure, you can track an increase in sales on your website via traffic from your Facebook Fan Page, but a social media effort is bigger than that. It’s about building brand awareness, increasing presence online, establishing consistency and credibility with consumers, and opening up a direct line of 2-way communication. You provide access to your brand for consumers, and a way to localize their experience with you.
Yes, tagging numbers to these goals can be difficult. But marketers should think outside of the box in terms of ROI — maybe it’s not always about hard numbers.
Social media is a definite asset, and should be integrated into your traditional marketing campaign. I wouldn’t suggest relying on it, alone. But it provides an extraordinary support system to your traditional efforts…if implemented properly.
The fact that seventy-five percent of the marketing executives believe that social media has a positive effect on business doesn’t mean they know that it does, what is working and what is not, and how to measure its impact. If they did and if the impact was significant, they would devote more time to it.
Like all advertising, there are hard and soft metrics to consider. At this point it may be difficult to measure the impact of social media on either. However, if marketers don’t develop the skill sets now to work with social media, they risk being behind those that do when the mechanisms are in place to measure the metrics.
Many executives in retail and consumer products are still missing out on the true benefits of comprehensive social media marketing. Many are still viewing social media as a nice value-added but not a necessity, and others are reading bad research to draw conclusions that are over generalized and flawed, that lead them to the wrong conclusions.
Part of the problem with marketers and social media is that most marketing groups are staffed so thinly that there is only so much time in a day to engage. Social is one of those areas of marketing that is so hands-on that it sucks more time than most people really have to devote.
I am a believer in gaining understanding and insight through personal experience, but that said, I think it’s impractical for marketers to spend more and more time in social. If they find the right social partner services, they can keep a hand in while getting the benefit of scale needed to make a difference in business results.
Most retailers are moving their social media practices ahead on “gut instincts.” Those instincts are correct in their assumption that consumers are making greater use of social media in a wide variety of ways. As with all media allocation, marketers capture the best results by segmenting their audiences, and targeting their messages to those segments.
Not all segments of the population, or categories of a retailer’s business, are quite ready for social media at this point in time. Retailers need to take the step to place social media into the overall marketing mix of traditional media.
The semi-annual Media Behavior & Influence Study from BIGinsight, providing Insights of 25,000+ adults, monitors influence on purchase for 31 different media forms. Why? Because we are living in a consumer-centric world that offers media choice — we aren’t in a media world of the 1960s with 5 different choices (radio, TV, newspaper, magazines, and direct mail) anymore, Toto.
Studies that properly measure consumer influence offer the metrics to properly allocate media.
Brands may invest more time and money in social media when they realize that that’s where the youngest adults are….
Pushing the share button on this site reveals over 300 choices for sharing information. My guess is that many of the companies’ social media could not clearly distinguish all these sources. I cannot. The point is that if your organization is using social media, then someone in your organization should know the difference. To measure the ROI you need to specifically identify the result you want from social media and then find a way to measure whether you get that result, and determine the cost of getting that result. The metrics will differ depending upon the goal. If awareness is your goal, then accessing the message is sufficient. If you want the consumers to search a site, then accessing the site is not a sufficient measurement. The appropriate metric depends upon your goal.
I’ve seen some very good social media integration between independent specialty blogs (pets, crafts/knitting, DIY home decorating, dishes/tablescaping, cooking, cycling, flower gardening, birding, etc.) and specialty retailers serving those same interests. That is still a vast uncharted territory to be explored I believe. In the past these specialty marketers often had trouble finding their most likely clients — and vice versa. No more.
Unfortunately I do not see the same benefits for many mass market retailers and national brands whose forays into social media (beyond their websites) usually seem forced and clumsy. Perhaps the synergy and necessity to use social media are just not there for a lot of businesses serving already over-stimulated mass consumers and never will be, regardless of how much money is thrown at it.
For decades, managers have been trying to associate ROI with specific marketing efforts. But honestly, isn’t it usually an undefinable mixture of things that gets customers in the door or to click their store online?
In general, the answer is not only “No” — it’s “Hell, No!”
Now, what’s the problem? Let’s start with age. Older marketers have come late to the social media game while younger marketers have grown up with it as part of the “digital wallpaper” of their lives. That’s not to say that older marketers can’t do well with social, but it is to say that won’t happen until, and unless, they let go of at least some of the “truths” that have made them successful in the pre-social media world. Thinking things like, “The message’s authority, credibility and power come from the source,” and “Clever is a reasonable substitute for engaged,” simply don’t work well in the social networking space. So … an “appropriate human resource” is a person young enough, or who thinks young enough to understand this is a new game with new rules.
As to financial resources “social media” budgets remind me an awful lot, (in a very scary way,) of “ethnic marketing” budgets. Any marketing tool that is siloed away from the main marketing effort is marginalized and therefore de facto under-resourced. I believe that social should be integrated — as in fully co-mingled — with all other marketing and business intelligence efforts and that a whole new set of metrics are needed. You get what you measure, after all, and treating a many-to-many world as though it were a one-to-many or even one-to-one effort is going to give you skewed results.
This is a marketing tool with which I’d much prefer to be a follower than a leader. In fact, a “kicking and screaming” follower. I’ve yet to see a real competitive advantage in using social media for marketing. If someday a retailer proves it works well in a big way, we’ll all go to school on their approach and jump on the bandwagon. The marketing executives polled for this report evidently feel the same way. As has been proven in the past, sometimes it’s better to be second in than first in.
An often overlooked facet of marketing with social media is training consumers. And that will require lots of retailers offering social media shopping opportunities. Without lots of retailers participating in a focused and persistent way, consumer training will be much slower and delay the progress of the medium as a selling tool.
After two years in the trenches of social media strategy, I can say with confidence the hype is over. 2011 was the year of “we’ve got to do something” and 2012 will be the year of “show me the money.” Until winning social media strategy can prove its ROI, marketers are dialing back the budgets and internalizing initiatives in a reaction to the hype with no measurable results. I get it and I consult on it with the C-Level every day.
The good news is, it’s not going away, so when you get serious about social media it will be directly tied to your online presence being diminished in Google’s eyes. “How much do I spend, what am I doing, do I internalize or outsource?” are questions best worked on with true social marketing strategists that understand the real power of effective social networking. I guess my stance is to do what you gotta’ do and when you realize your going nowhere fast, pick up the phone and start working with someone who can tell as much of what NOT to do as they can what to do.
In the supermarket channel, I’ve rarely seen much ROI or brand differentiation here. When I run focus groups, it is extraordinarily rare for people to say they visit their supermarket’s website. For this channel, it just isn’t there yet. Like some others here, I’d be waiting in the wings, ready to pounce if a successful strategy arises. As an aside, can’t resist noting that visiting my 3-year-old granddaughter, noticed she’s already about as computer literate as I am. And one of her friends was extremely frustrated when she was looking at a magazine, moving her fingertips across the page and expecting to see a new page view. Wow.
I just read today where Nike is spending more on marketing than ever before; not traditional ad spend, but social media. When interviewed, a Nike spokesperson made a statement I completely agree with and is relevant to this discussion: “We used to just push stuff out there, but now we’ve realized, it’s not what you say, it’s a dialogue.”
All retailers should look at it that way as Nike apparently has made great headway with younger consumers because of their efforts.
Social is new, still in a period of experimentation to find the “best” strategies and tactics. So in my judgment, allocated resources are appropriate. I think as more retailers tap into the wealth of social data, more precise ROI will be available.
To learn more, NRF has published the Social Retailing Blueprint.
90% use it. 75% believe it has a positive impact on business. 90% spend less than 10 hours a week on the effort.
There’s a conflicted group if I’ve ever seen one!
Let’s forget the first number because its likely false. Let’s take the second and third numbers and put them together. So, 75% believe it has a positive impact? Yet, they evidently can’t enumerate it. If they could they’d be spending more than 10 hours a week on it, right?
For now, the value of social media is talking about one’s self and believing others really want to know. They don’t. They also want to talk about themselves. There will be a lot of arrows in the back of those pioneering this media. While that’s going on, it may be a better thing to listen to others talk about themselves until someone can figure out what others want to hear.
In general, no, the right effort is not being spent. However, that does not necessarily mean the right amount of “time.” A small amount of time on the right efforts pays off more than a ton of time just randomly “tweeting.”
Metrics need to include: “Reach,” “Authority,” Influence,” and other similar sentiments. There are great tools for this. Also, having a finger on the pulse of consumer sentiment and responding quickly is key.
You know, just about every other year something new comes along and the retail talking heads make it a must have, if you are going to survive. The fact is, each of these “silver bullets” diverts attention away from what is important, and that is customer service. When are the retailers going to get back to hiring right and training right?
The ones who are doing it right don’t have to worry about hopping on the social media bandwagon, they have been there for years. It’s called “word of mouth”! Don’t waste you time on Facebook (the only real social media), spend your time running your business right and let your competition chase its tail. The key to success is work, not shortcuts. If you don’t know what you are doing, then find someone who does and put them in charge. Facebook won’t make you a genius, it will just show thousands more what you really are.
When you talk about the appropriate amount of resources given to social media, you need to take into account that most social media is not generating clear incremental return on investment; in fact, most social media is not easily measurable in and of itself. The return on investment for an improvement in customer service is clear; however, for marketing activities designed to increase brand affiliation, frequency, retention and advocacy, the results are not yet in.
So what is the appropriate amount of human and financial resources for social media? I think many retailers this year will decide that the appropriate level of spending is less than they spent in the previous 2 years. Until we are able to make a connection between the communications that we put on the web and the actions that customers take, the social media budget will continue to be under attack.
The measurement of return on investment for social media relies on the ability to identify the specific customers who are engaged in social media and what their purchase patterns were prior to their engagement on social media and afterward. As a result, I believe that much of social media marketing in the future will be dedicated to identifying the right customers and then tracking their behavior over time.
This survey focused mostly on B2B social media marketing, including emails and mobile. (About 88% of the executives questioned are business to business.)
To answer the question, I’d be interested in a comparison survey, one geared to direct to consumer marketers.
Using all the “big data” will help reveal the value. With the right data, brands/businesses can not only understand the ROI, but also can start to get beyond the functional view of loyalty into the emotional sides. Early days, but very exciting times.
I’d like to see much more of focus on the data vision and roadmap to help enable connections with individual consumers, but this area is generally misunderstood by marketers and researchers.