Market Insights

Social Media Marketing Trends: Upwards, Especially for Lead Generation

— Friday, October 14, 2011

If you are on the fence about whether to take the social media marketing plunge, you should definitely check out this research provided by Sandy Fivecoat, Founder of the WeAreTeachers online community for educators, in a recent MDR Webinar. The bottom line of her findings: more marketers are investing in social media and using it for lead generation. Check out these recent studies for more insight:

  • An Answerlab & Society of Digital Agencies study found that 61% of marketers were planning to invest more in earned media, which was defined as favorable publicity gained through promotional efforts other than advertising (such as social media). When companies were asked why they are spending more on social media, they say lead generation is rising as the key driver.
  • In a survey from R2Integrated, 61% of respondents reported lead generation as the main purpose of their social programs, with monitoring the conversation about one’s brand coming in at a distant second choice, with only 27% of businesses saying this was the goal of their social marketing. This is a shift from earlier reports, which indicated that increasing brand awareness and web traffic were the primary role of businesses’ social marketing programs.
  • The trend toward using social media for lead generation was also seen in research conducted by Unisfair, which found that social media was the top “emerging channel” for lead generation with marketers and 74% of respondents chose it as their first choice, selecting it twice as often as other emerging channels, like virtual events and mobile marketing.
  • Michael Stelzner’s 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, the latest edition of his annual survey of businesses on the benefits of social media marketing, saw the generation of qualified leads make the top benefits list for the first time, with just over half of the businesses surveyed identifying this as a benefit of social media marketing, behind increased exposure (88%), increased traffic (72%), and improved search rankings (62%).

So what’s ahead? Sandy is expecting social media programs and their related budgets to continue to rise as businesses see more return, especially monetary return on investment in this new media channel.

Is it time for you to start experimenting with social media? There is no time like the present to give it a try—the payoffs could be great!

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