IAB research finds 88% of brands rate social media as important to their business.
New research from the Internet Advertising Bureau’s Social Media Council reveals that 88% of UK brands rate social media as important to their business. The study, conducted in partnership with research company Opinion Matters, found that:
- Social media will be getting greater budget allocations this year
- Responsibility for social media within client organisations spans a number of departments, suggesting a need for ‘social media teams’ representing a range of skillsets such as marketing, PR and customer service
- Driving brand awareness and consideration are the most popular uses of social media
- Marketers identify the main challenges for social media as measurement and proving ROI
Social media budgets and usage on the up
According to respondents, spend dedicated to the discipline will increase this year, with a third of advertisers planning to allocate between 6 and 20% of their digital marketing budgets on social media in 2010, compared with just 14% in 2009.
The study - conducted amongst 80 senior level marketers – found that only 7% of respondents yet haven’t embraced social media in any way, with 22% having made it a core part of their communications strategy, 20% feeding it into most campaigns, 23.5% using social media in ad hoc projects and 27% having tested it with a view to using again.
Social media responsibility amongst all departments
The results confirm that there is still a level of uncertainty surrounding where social media should fit within the business, suggesting that a range of skillsets are required internally for advertisers to make best use of the discipline. Whilst three quarters (73%) of respondents stated that social media belonged within the marketing department, it was also found to be the responsibility of PR (33%), research (12%) customer services (16%) and IT teams (7%).
Based on this evidence the IAB recommends the establishment of ‘social media teams’ within client organisations looking to fully incorporate social media within their communications plans, spanning a number of departments.
Social media drives awareness and advocacy
Amongst the reasons why marketers have embraced social media, driving awareness and consideration was the most common choice, with around 77% using it for this purpose, with 75% using it to drive engagement and advocacy. Whilst many are using social media for research purposes (60%) almost half (47%) have been using it to drive product sales.
Challenges for the social media industry
Due to its much more qualitative nature, three quarters (74%) of respondents believed that proving ROI was the biggest challenge for the social media industry, whilst 64% saw measurement as the most significant hurdle, and over half (57%) stating that more education of how best to use it is required.
Twitter and social media monitoring take the lead
In terms of the types of social media activity advertisers currently hold resonance with clients, Twitter and social media monitoring were the most popular, with half (51%) of brands having used these tools and citing them as very important. Other forms of social media that held real significance with respondents were Facebook pages, with 47% of people believing these to be very important, own branded communities (39%), blogger outreach (37%) UGC (37%), video distribution (37%), reactive customer service (36%) and display advertising within social networks (35%).
However there are still some areas of social media that marketers are not yet familiar with, with around 27% of respondents not knowing what crowdsourcing is for example.
Tony Effik, chair of the IAB social media council and chief strategy officer for Publicis Modem said: "This is going to be a big year for social media, and we at the Social Media Council are determined to help make it easier, and more effective for marketers and agencies to participate in this revolution. The research highlights some of challenges we have, such as ensuring clarity of new social concepts, such as crowdsourcing, and in ensuring that ROI, and accountability in general are essential in the drive for growth."
Simon Rutherford, who until recently was Head of Digital at Toyota, and is in the process of establishing a Social Media agency said “Social Media has the potential to confuse organisations, because it requires a mix of skills which have traditionally been exclusively contained within departments. For example, whilst Marketing might manage Research, and the development of Content, PR might understand how to handle misinformation about their Company and Products. And CR are a critical part too. It’s an easy mistake to produce outbound communications without connecting them to a burden of inbound complaints or comments, but that wont help you prepare properly for the complexity of Social Media.'
'Is the answer to reskill, but stay within departments, or to form a new dedicated team? To some extent the answer will differ from organisation to organisation. Either way the first step is to clarify the strengths of each department, and map those against the skills required to succeed in Social. That way each department can re-evaluate the other. It may also help clarify which skills need to be bought in externally'.
Amy Kean, senior PR and marketing manager for the IAB and manager of the social media council said: “For those of us immersed in the social media industry, it’s easy to forget that some advertisers are still new to the area, which is why further education and research is critical. Our research has found that many brands, whilst rating social media as very important to their business, are still at the testing stage and hope to do more over the next 12 months.
Social media activity has the potential to sit at the very heart of an organisation, and as such requires a range of expertise in communications, promotion, insights and customer care in order make the whole package a successful one.”
Click here to access the IAB social media marketer survey, January 2010 (members only).
