CMOs’ Big Social Media Spending Plans Continue

August 22, 2012

This article is included in these additional categories:

Analytics, Automated & MarTech | B2B | Data-driven | Financial Services | Social Media | Staffing | Uncategorized

dukecmosurvey-projected-social-media-spending-august2012.pngCMOs continue to project big increases in social media spending in the next 5 years, according to [pdf] findings from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, which released its latest CMO Survey in August 2012. The survey finds that social media currently makes up an average of 7.6% of respondents’ total marketing budgets, up from 7.4% in February. That share is expected to jump by more than 40% in the next year to 10.7%, and to more than double to 18.8% in the next 5 years.

Although these projections are slightly down from February’s expectations (10.8% in the next 12 months; 19.8% in the next 5 years), they still represent a strong inclination that CMOs are ready to increase their social media efforts. A recent survey of 100 CMO Club members by Bazaarvoice found that slightly more than 3 in 4 are at least somewhat confident that their social efforts are having a measurable impact on sales.

B2B Services Firms Up Spend Share Significantly

Details from The CMO Survey indicate that CMOs from B2B services firms now estimate that they are spending 9.4% of their total marketing budgets on social media, which represents a significant 2% point jump from 7.4% just 6 months ago. Also increasing their share of spend devoted to social media are B2C service companies: their current spending share of 9% is not a big jump from 8.4% in February, but is a marked contrast from 5.9% just one year ago.

By contrast, B2C product companies appear to have moved some spend away from social media. In August, CMOs from these companies estimated spending 9% of their total marketing budgets on social media, down from their leading shares of 9.6% in February 2012 and 10.5% in August.

Social’s 5-Year Outlook Brighter for B2C Product Firms

B2C product companies have also tempered their 12-month outlook for social media spending, dropping from a projected 15.3% share of total marketing budgets in February, to an expected 11.4% share for the August survey. Over time, though, these companies do expect social media to make up a significant proportion of their budgets: in fact, the latest findings reveal that CMOs from B2C product companies expect social media to make up 24.4% of their total marketing budgets in the next 5 years (up from an expected 23% in February).

Also upping their 5-year forecasts are B2B services companies (20% projected share in August vs. 19.1% in February) and B2C services companies (19.3% vs. 19%). Conversely, B2B product companies have not only dropped their current share of spend to 5% (from 6.2%), but have also reduced their expected 1-year and 5-year spending share projections for social media spending, to 8.4% and 15.3%, respectively.

Social Media Integration Not Getting Any Better

Further results from the report suggest that while social media is getting more share of marketing budgets, CMOs are not getting any better at integrating this channel with their overall marketing strategy. Just 1 in 5 respondents rated their social media integration a top-2 box score on a 7-point scale of integration (where 7 indicates very integrated). By comparison, 16.7% said social media was not at all integrated, with a rating of 1, and a further 13.3% scored their integration a 2.

Overall, respondents gave the effectiveness of their social media integration a mean score of 3.8, unchanged from February 2012 and February 2011. Current mean integration levels were highest among B2C product and service companies (both at 4.3). Despite having the highest current share of marketing spend devoted to social media, B2B services companies rated the effectiveness of their social media integration almost exactly as average, with a mean rating of 4.1.

A June 2012 report from InSites Consulting (in partnership with SSI and No Problem!) found that despite high social media adoption, just 12% of the companies hailing from the US and 5 European markets who responded to the survey believe they have fully integrated social media into their business processes.

Other Findings:

  • According to the Duke University survey, CMOs rated the effectiveness of their customer information integration across all purchasing channels a mean score of 3.9 on a 7-point scale. For customer information integration across all communications and social media channels, that mean score dropped to 3.7.
  • The average CMO indicated that 3.6 people were employed in-house to do social media for their company, a big drop from 9 in February 2012. Similarly, CMOs reported the number of individuals from outside vendors providing social media support to the company to be 2, down from 4 in February.

About the Data: The CMO Survey is conducted online twice a year. The latest survey was fielded from July 17 to August 3, 2012. 528 CMOs responded to the survey, of which 86% were VP level or above.

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