Social Media, Probably not a Fade…

As humans, we are inherently against change—and so, there will always be those who resist it until beaten over the head.  Think about some of the communication landmarks of the past 15-20 years and at what stage you and/or your company began to use them in your marketing strategies…e-mail, chat rooms, instant messaging, online networks (i.e. CompuServe, Prodigy, AOL, etc.), web sites, search engines, online video, blogs and now social media and mobile (in the context of the web).

The adoption curve goes like this:

• Innovators – Bold people who pull change.
• Early Adopters – Respected leaders who try out new ideas.
• Early Majority – Thoughtful people who are careful, but accepting of change more quickly than the average.
• Late Majority – Skeptical people who will only use new ideas or products once they’re being used by the majority.
• Laggards – Traditional people who are critical of new ideas and will only adopt if forced to by the majority.

More than half fall into the last two categories, they are the ones whose businesses will be left behind in the new economy, there are new rules to marketing and PR and unless you begin to change and adopt at a faster pace, your competitor(s) will crush you.

It’s easy to think that social media will be a fade, but that’s what people thought of all the other technologies listed above…all of which were game-changers at the time.  The web is different than other traditional mediums in that it’s also a technology; therefore it’s ever-changing.

Because of the lagging economy, many businesses are not increasing marketing budgets, but rather reallocating resources.  According to Forester Research, 61% of businesses are shifting budgets away from traditional marketing to interactive, 75% will come at the expense of Direct Mail (40%) and Newspapers (35%).  In the same Forester study the majority of the budget shift is going toward social media and online videos, followed by SEO.

Interactive marketing spending has, and continues to increase dramatically.  In 2005 the marketing percent spent was 8% at $11B, 2009 was 12% at $25.6B and by 2014 it is predicted to be 21% at $55B.  Of those numbers social media accounted for only $716M in 2009, but is expected to rise to $3.11B by 2014, a 442% increase. Mobile Marketing, which is also expected to rise dramatically, was $391m in 2009, expected to be $1.3B by 2014.

By 2014 over one-fifth of all marketing dollars will be invested in interactive initiatives…that’s amazing for a medium that just hit “late majority” status merely a decade ago (in Feb. 2000 10m domains had been sold, by Sep. 2000 over 20m).  If you would like a copy of the comprehensive Forrester report in which I pulled this data from, please e-mail me.

I recently attended a Social Media panel discussion hosted by: AZIMA on how to integrate social media into your marketing plan—here were a couple of my take-aways…

• Have a narrative
• Don’t chase tactics before figuring out a strategy
• Create a company policy
• Scale resources
• Address integration challenges
• Create success metrics

Here is a good video on Social Media ROI, however I do object to one thing they allude to…nothing is “free,” while many of the mediums themselves are, labor isn’t.

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 5:21 pm and is filed under Interactive/Web INFO.