Marketing budgets have increased from a year ago and the majority of this increase is going toward interactive digital and social media according to a new study. The study found that ‘increased value is being placed on new marketing channels, with 45 per cent of the respondents saying that their marketing budgets for social media, social networking and interactive digital media have increased’. The study also found that the top three social media marketing tools are Facebook, blogs and LinkedIn.

The key study highlights are,

• 90% Use their website primarily as a means to inform customers
• 94% use social media marketing in order to generate exposure for their business
• 35% use social media to generate new leads
• 29% use social media to establish a thought leadership position
• 28% use social media to engage customers
• 70% manage their social media marketing in house
• 12% outsourced their social media marketing

A Flawed Social Media Marketing Study?

Usually Rake Mark wouldn’t report on a study such as this but it is important to consider reports such as this from time to time to highlight that everything you read must be considered before implementing. If you take this study into social media marketing there are some strange figures that cannot really be explained.

If 90% primarily use their websites to inform customers then this must mean that less than 10% of the websites were not e-commerce sites, unless of course the owner wants to inform his customers first and sell products online as an afterthought. Another interesting statistic is that 70% manage their social media marketing in house and 12% outsource their social media marketing. So what does the other 18% do? Did they not answer the question, not understand it or were their other responses (that I can’t think of) that are not reported.

The three top reported social media marketing tools were Facebook, blogs and linked in. So what about Twitter? Twitter is widespread across the world, but not mentioned in this social medial marketing study. I think that you can conclude that these results aren’t worth the electrons used to read it (at least there were no trees harmed) and that other studies do offer better information about social media trends. I also think that it reminds us to be careful who we listen to and not always take everything at face value.