Social Media Marketing

Based on a report by the Forrester Research, advertisers spend somewhat a little time on social media marketing regardless of the current hype on Twitter and Facebook. The data shows that 75% of marketers have budgets lesser than $100,000 for social media campaigns for the next year. The firm resolved that social media is still beyond the mainstream of marketing and is still in the experimental status. This is regardless of the fact that social media marketing requires lesser funding than traditional advertisement efforts.

So why are marketers still hesitant in employing social media marketing for their marketing efforts?

1. Social media’s impact is yet to be quantified.
The popularity of social media is undeniable and it can evidently move information faster than imagined before. But since marketing functions with accepted measurement standards, which social media can’t provide at its present condition, marketers are limited to make use of social media on “as-needed” basis. Marketers require actual data of customers moved through the marketing funnel with social media efforts. Dedicated strategies and programs are necessary to advertise brands successfully as other marketing vehicles have done.

2. Social media is a relatively new marketing strategy and pulling budget for it requires justification.
Marketers are having difficulties justifying their move to pull out some budget from other marketing efforts to social media projects. The management generally requires hard facts of effectivity and efficiency of certain efforts before approving financial support. This, however, is not much of a problem anymore with 53% of the marketers saying that they are expecting an increase in social media spending.

3. Marketers are still clamoring to be educated on social media marketing.
The newness of this strategy is yet to be explored by other marketers who have remained loyal to traditional advertising. Once these marketers and their companies fully understand and appreciate how social media works, they will surely find it a great tool in enabling them to reach their target audience, far more better than they used to with traditional marketing.

The moment these concerns are properly addressed, marketers will surely run to social media for a boost in their marketing efforts and we will all be amazed at how socially driven are we human beings.

Social media marketing is definitely in the buzz these days. The extent of the popularity of the internet and its capacity to reach the traditionally unreachable corners has made the use of social media to market businesses very accessible. The popularity of social media marketing can best be checked with the marketers themselves.


A study was conducted on marketers to find out their extent of use of social media to market their businesses. It shows that out of the 700 marketers surveyed, 88% signified that they are using social media in marketing their businesses. Of those that use social media for marketing, more than 90% are business owners and only 81% employees opt to do so. 92.8 percent that use social media are aged 30 to 39 years.

Social Media Marketing Exposure
Most (72%) of the marketers say that they have just started using social media marketing to promote their businesses. 30.2 percent of those that are just starting to use social media for their businesses are sole proprietors. Those that have most exposure on social media marketing are owners of businesses with 2 to 100 employees. A total of 29.3% of them are already employing social media marketing for several years. And most of those who are just starting to use social media marketing are aged 60 to 69 years old.

It is evident the, that even though there is a certain hype in terms of social media marketing, much is still to be discovered by most marketers since the exposure to the new business strategy is not yet maximized. There remains a very vast opportunity for everyone in social media marketing.