CMOs say that social media currently accounts for 8.4% of their marketing budgets, but that social’s share of the pie will jump to 11.5% over the next 12 months, and climb all the way to 21.6% share in the next 5 years, according to [pdf] findings from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, which just released its latest CMO Survey. The forecast may be over-aggressive, though: last year, CMOs predicted that social would grab 10.8% share of budgets by this point, with the reported share this year (8.4%) about 20% below that mark. Nevertheless, budgets are definitely on the increase: the 8.4% share noted in this survey is up more than 10% from 7.6% in August 2012, and is also up from 7.4% in February of last year.
The latest survey shows that current spending (as a share of total marketing budgets) is highest among B2C-services companies (9.9%), with B2C-product (9.6%) and B2B-services (9.6%) companies close behind. B2B-product companies drag down the average, spending only 7.5% share of their budgets on social.
When it comes to projected spending, B2C-product companies are the most bullish, forecasting 13.2% share of their budgets going to social in the next year, and almost one-quarter in the next 5 years.
In related results, the study finds that social media is still poorly integrated into overall marketing strategy, with a mean integration score of 3.8 on a 7-point scale, unchanged from the previous 3 installments of the survey.
While integration hasn’t shifted, the way CMOs measure social media success has. Compared to the August 2010 survey, CMOs are more actively looking at referral metrics such as number of followers or friends (30.5% vs. 24%) and net promoter score (9.8% vs. 7.5%), and looking less at financial metrics such as sales levels (8.7% vs. 17.9%), revenue per customer (9.2% vs. 17.2%) and profits per customer (4.5% vs. 9.4%).
About the Data: The CMO Survey is conducted online twice a year. The latest survey was fielded from January 22 to February 8, 2013. 468 CMOs responded to the survey, of which 95% were VP level or above.
