PR

45% of business leaders expect to increase their marketing budgets in 2013, according to [pdf] survey results from StrongMail. Email marketing and social media are top of the spending agenda, with a majority 55.5% and 51.8% of those respondents expecting to increase spending on those channels, respectively. Not far behind, roughly 4 in 10 plan to spend more on mobile (42.8%) and search (SEO/PPC - 39.8%), while traditional channels such as direct mail (15.4%) and PR (13.9%) sit at the bottom of the list. Read more »

The world's top 100 brands (according to Interbrand) are almost universally using Twitter, although far fewer are actively engaging in customer service over the platform, details Simply Measured in a December study. The study finds that while 95 of the top 100 brands are active on Twitter, less than a quarter of those (23) have a dedicated customer service handle, and only 15 respond to 10 or more tweets per day on such a handle. Read more »

Social care (customer service through social media channels) is becoming more important, with recent research from NM Incite showing that 1 in 2 social media users are now accessing customer service through a social media platform. According to data from Socialbakers, in Q3, companies responded to 48% of questions posed on their Facebook pages. So how did the largest property and casualty insurers fare? A new MarketingCharts report on insurance marketing benchmarks the industry leaders, and explains why their "social devotion" matters. Read more »

Social media duties are treated more as add-on job functions, and don't often get a dedicated internal team, details a [download page] new Ragan/NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions survey. 65% of the survey respondents - the majority of whom hail from organizations that employ more than 100 people - said that social media tasks are assigned on top of current job responsibilities. 27% said they have an internal team that works exclusively on social media, while an additional 5% said they have both an internal department and use an outside agency or partner. Read more »

SMBs are using a number of different tactics to draw new business, according to [download page] a Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Act-on Software, but digital marketing continues to take a backseat to tried-and-true face-to-face tactics. Asked which techniques they use to acquire new customers, at least half indicated they were using 14 of the 15 identified. Leading the pack are personal relationships and networking (95%), tradeshows and industry events (89%), and in-person events (86%). Read more »

About two-thirds of companies using social customer service claim to respond in 4 hours or less, and 26% within a day, according to October 2012 findings by SocialMediaToday, in cooperation with SAP and the Pivot Conference. Customers who want a quicker answer to their questions might want to think about picking up the phone. Results from an Ifbyphone study [pdf] released in November indicate that a majority of top retailers answer inbound local calls in less than 30 seconds and corporate-level calls in under 90 seconds. Read more »

47% of American social media users aged 18 and older have used "social care," finds NM Incite [download page] in a new report. That figure, unsurprisingly, is highest among younger groups, with 60% of 18-24-year-old females and 57% of males of that age accessing customer service through a social media platform. And although the use of social media for customer service drops among more mature groups, around 3 in 10 social media users aged 65 and older report having used social care. Read more »

The average number of followers boasted by Twitter users that mention top brands grew sharply in the first half (H1) of 2012, according to [download page] the Bazaarvoice Conversation Index Vol. 5, released October 2012. The average number of followers jumped from 1183 in January to 1566 in June among users that mentioned 1 or more of 13 major brands examined. This heightens the opportunities and risks for these brands. On the one hand, increased amplification of positive mentions could prove a boon. On the other hand, negative mentions could escalate PR crises in a hurry. Read more »

Global investment in public relations (PR) is treading water, according to the latest Grayling Pulse Report, released October 2012. A plurality (41.7%) of in-house marketing and communications professionals surveyed from around the world report that their companies' PR investments were unchanged in Q3 2012. The percentage who reported those investments to be down was virtually unchanged from the previous quarter (18.8% for Q3 vs. 19% for Q2), as was the proportion who reported an investment hike (20.1% v. 21.8%). Read more »

Depending on the industry, nearly one-third of American consumers would be willing to pay a premium for simpler brand experiences and interactions, according to [download page] Siegel+Gale's 3rd annual Global Brand Simplicity Index, released in October 2012. Simplicity is defined as the ease of interactions and communications with a brand (e.g., researching, purchasing, interacting with customer service, etc.). For some industries, US consumers report they are willing to pay premiums upwards of 3.5% for simpler experiences. Read more »