Marketers to focus on social media in 2010

Alterian's annual survey has suggested that 66 per cent of marketing professionals are to invest in social media marketing over the next 12 months.

Of those investing in social media marketing, 40 per cent said they would be shifting more than a fifth of their traditional direct marketing budget towards funding their social media marketing activities.

According to Alterian, this supports other statistics from the survey, which found that 67 per cent of respondents feel social media is either 'increasingly important' or 'critical to success'.

David Eldridge, chief executive officer at Alterian, said: '2010 marks the start of the digital decade for marketing.

'Untargeted and irrelevant marketing techniques are now redundant and the results of this survey show many in the industry recognise this.

'The one thing to remember, however, is that investment in social media marketing is futile without adequate measurement,' he added.

The survey found that 39 per cent of respondents are investing in social media monitoring and analysis tools.

Alterian said this is a significant percentage considering the maturity of the channel and reflects the growing understanding that a social media marketing strategy needs to be based on listening to customers and prospects and its return on investment needs to be measured.

Eldridge said: 'Without the adequate investment in listening and measurement tools it renders any anticipated investment in social media ineffectual.

'The key to an effective social media strategy is listening,' he added.

The survey also explored the extent to which organisations integrate marketing technologies across their organisation.

Forty-two per cent of respondents said they do not incorporate clickstream and web analytics data into their customer and e-mail database.

'This is a worrying statistic as it shows many organisations are losing any advantage that this valuable insight could give them,' said Eldridge.

In addition, the research looked at the importance of customer engagement and found that 51 per cent are placing a 'fair' or 'significant' amount of effort on moving from a campaign-centric direct marketing model towards multichannel customer engagement - only seven per cent are making no effort at all.

Eldridge added: 'Engaging with customers is becoming paramount and the yardstick by which we measure those brands that survive and those that do not.

'Marketers now need to appeal to the individual and engage with customers on a one-to-one basis.

'The easiest way to achieve this is by investing in social media marketing and monitoring, and by embracing the web.

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