Three-fourths of marketers are planning to increase their outreach to social media in 2010, while roughly half intend to up their efforts in each of the following: SEO, email marketing, and virtual events/environments, according to recent research by Unisfair.
The survey, which was undertaken to gauge the importance of virtual events in the 2010 marketing mix and barriers to more widespread adoption, polled more than 100 US marketing professionals about their plans for next year.
It found that the most popular reasons for adopting virtual events are to extend marketing reach (32%) and increase lead volume (15%).
For those not embracing virtual events, the biggest barriers include not knowing how to organize a virtual event, the perception of a complicated set-up process, and a lack of a virtual event provider.
Other survey findings:
- Lead generation and customer retention/engagement are the most critical objectives for marketers today, with 60% and 48% respectively ranking them as very important on a scale of one to five.
- 26%? of marketers (the highest percentage for any one method), say LinkedIn is the social networking tool proven to add the most marketing value. Facebook came in a close second with 23%.
