«Chief Marketer Annual Survey Find Marketers Believe in Power of Social»

Chief Marketer launched a survey to the CMO's about the use of social media.  I'm going to share some of the results, that I found more relevant.


METHODOLOGY:

The 2011 Chief Marketer Social Marketing Survey was conducted online between August 18 and August 31, 2011 and polled 750 active marketing professionals distributed across business-to-consumer and business to-business models, from brands and agencies in the manufacturing, retail, financial, healthcare, travel, entertainment, advertising, publishing, database and nonprofit sectors.


GOING SOCIAL 

The ability to reach customers at multiple touchpoints rather than simply through one channel remains the most often cited benefit of social marketing, according to 85% of this year’s respondents (81% in 2010). And 60% of those polled this year say they’re involved in marketing through social media for the plain reason that their target customers are spending increasing amounts of time in those channels, compared to 59% who said the same last year.
For the first time, this year’s questionnaire allowed respondents to list the viral effect of social media as one of its key benefits. And it turns out that it’s a big one: 59% named it as one of the three key assets of social marketing.
Other reasons for including social in the marketing mix included a transition to one-to-one messaging, customer expectations, cost efficiencies and the chance to reach previously untapped audiences. Least important: Doing social because the boss expects it (15%).


SETTING SOCIAL AIMS 

As in the 2010 social marketing survey, the aim most often cited for doing social marketing is simply to drive traffic to a brand Web site or other microsite. Two-thirds of respondents named that among their top three goals for social marketing this year, compared to 56% in 2010. On average, respondents to this year’s survey get 15% of their Web traffic from social media, compared to only 7% a year ago.
Interestingly, a larger proportion of those polled cited “generate leads or sales” as a strategic goal for social marketing: 48%, compared to 41% who said the same last year. That increase was just enough to edge out “identify and address brand fans” (47%), the second most popular aim in the previous survey. At the same time, amassing total followers fell off as a stated aim from 34% in the 2010 survey to only 26% this year, behind driving opt-ins and monitoring brand reputation. The suggestion is that simply racking up fan counts is giving way to more hard-edged indicators of social marketing success—especially those that drive to the bottom line.



SO MANY TACTICS 

Respondents are deploying a pretty full range of social-marketing tools, but the classic still has the most appeal: More than two-thirds of respondents who use social marketing let visitors or email recipients share content to their social pages, where it can get picked up by their friends. Fewer, but still substantially more than half of social marketers, offer special content to their social media fans (59%) or place “like” buttons around their Web or social pages to connect with their supporters. And 54% of brands say they post video to YouTube, Vimeo or other aggregator sites.
Down at the more “niche” end of the spectrum, 31% of respondents say they have used Promoted Tweets in a Twitter campaign and 26% say they can conduct transactions within social media; both results seem anomalously high. Only 16% of respondents said they have offered rewards or discounts in location-based networks such as Foursquare, Gowalla or SCVNGR. And only 7% say they have marketed by offering virtual goods of branded content in a social game such as Farmville—although of course those few include some of the biggest brands in the country, from 7-Eleven and McDonald’s to Doritos and State Farm Insurance.



WHY NOT SOCIAL?

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