{"id":138,"date":"2012-01-14T23:41:47","date_gmt":"2012-01-15T04:41:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tridence.wordpress.com\/2012\/01\/14\/where-social-media-marketing-fits-in-your-2012-budget\/"},"modified":"2020-06-26T22:12:54","modified_gmt":"2020-06-26T22:12:54","slug":"where-social-media-marketing-fits-in-your-2012-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tridence.com\/blog\/where-social-media-marketing-fits-in-your-2012-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Social Media Marketing Fits In Your 2012 Budget?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<div>Regardless of what marketers say about social media, the rubber hits the road at budget time when they have to put their money where their mouth is. For B2B marketers,\u00a0<a title=\"social media marketing\" href=\"http:\/\/www.marketo.com\/b2b-marketing-software\/b2b-social-media-marketing.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">social media marketing<\/a>\u00a0ranks seventh in terms of budget importance trailing old-fashioned postal direct mail according to\u00a0<a title=\"2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report\" href=\"http:\/\/ftp.marketingsherpa.com\/Marketing%20Files\/PDF%27s\/Executive%20Summary\/2012B2BBRMExcerpt.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report<\/a>\u00a0conducted by Marketing Sherpa and sponsored by Marketo.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.marketo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/2012B2BMarketingBenchmarkReport.jpg?resize=514%2C356\" alt=\"\" width=\"514\" height=\"356\" title=\"\"><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Where is social media in your\u00a0<a title=\"B2B marketing\" href=\"http:\/\/blog.marketo.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">B2B marketing<\/a>\u00a0budget?<\/p>\n<p>Before you write off social media as a consumer-only marketing strategy, here are\u00a0<strong>3 reasons<\/strong>\u00a0many B2B marketers overlook the importance of social media in their 2012 budgets.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>1.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Weak U.S. economy drives use of tried and true marketing strategies.<\/strong>\u00a0The continued frail U.S. economy has made marketers reticent to use more experimental formats. It\u2019s safer and easier to use the marketing strategies that worked best historically and provide an indicator of performance potential.\u00a0 As a result, there\u2019s less perceived risk.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>2.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Marketers overlook the cost of social media.<\/strong>\u00a0If social media has no cost, then there\u2019s no reason to include it in your budget. Of course, this is a fallacy because social media marketing requires brand monitoring to track the conversation, content marketing to feed social media engagement, and headcount to participate on social media platforms.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>3.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Social media has weak or limited metrics.<\/strong>\u00a0Across the board, marketers are challenged when it comes to measuring hard results from social media in terms of\u00a0<a title=\"lead generation\" href=\"http:\/\/www.marketo.com\/b2b-marketing-resources\/category\/best-practices\/lead-generation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">lead generation<\/a>\u00a0and sales. Last year, research from SmartBrief for Social Media and Summus Limited found that only one third of firms tracked social\u00a0<a title=\"marketing ROI\" href=\"http:\/\/www.marketo.com\/b2b-marketing-software\/marketing-roi.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">media marketing ROI<\/a>after three years. Exacerbating this problem is the fact that some marketers don\u2019t include a clear call-to-action and unique tracking code within social.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you\u2019re a B2B who does NOT overlook social media, but has yet to effectively incorporate social into your marketing strategy, here are\u00a0<strong>5 suggestions to get you started with social<\/strong>\u00a0leveraging existing marketing strategies. If implemented effectively, your social media marketing can enhance other areas of your marketing budget.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>1.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Use social media to support your search optimization efforts (SEO)<\/strong>. To this end, create a blog and integrate it with your website. Where appropriate, link to products on your website. When done well, these two marketing strategies support each other. Incorporate improved organic search rankings into your tracking metrics.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>2.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Create relevant content marketing.<\/strong>\u00a0When implementing a social media marketing strategy, develop appropriate content. To ensure that you have sufficient content, plan your editorial calendar to include both unique and repurposed content with a new twist within social channels. Understand that using the same boring product information everywhere won\u2019t cut it!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>3.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Incorporate contextually relevant call-to-action and related unique tracking codes.<\/strong>\u00a0The bottom line is that it\u2019s difficult to make a case for social media if you can\u2019t show business results. To this end, it\u2019s important to develop metrics that relate back to your business objectives at the point when you\u2019re developing your overall marketing plans. Otherwise, you\u2019ll have to make do with whatever you\u2019re able to collect after the fact and the challenge is that social media can have an impact on soft issues that are outside of your regular tracking.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>4.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Add social sharing to your content.<\/strong>\u00a0Cost-effectively extend the reach of your marketing by including social sharing buttons and related calls-to-action on your content. Use the dominant formats, namely Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and StumbleUpon. The aim is to increase your reach via earned impressions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>5.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Support your social media marketing efforts with internal or owned media.<\/strong>Social media doesn\u2019t exist in a vacuum. It requires marketing to drive readers and engagement. To this end, leverage your internal media, namely your website, emailings, business cards and email signature files to promote your social media executions. While a special targeted marketing promotion isn\u2019t needed, it does need to be marketed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Social media should have a place in your B2B marketing plans and budget. While you may want to believe that social media is free, it requires support both human and financial as well as senior management buy-in. Further, social media marketing must be integrated into your overall strategy to maximize its effectiveness and ensure that it\u2019s cross-promoted and tracked appropriately.<\/p>\n<p>Where is social media marketing fit into your plans for 2012?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/p>\n<div>Author: Maria Pergolino<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Regardless of what marketers say about social media, the rubber hits the road at budget time when they have to put their money where their mouth is. For B2B marketers,\u00a0social media marketing\u00a0ranks seventh in terms of budget importance trailing old-fashioned postal direct mail according to\u00a02012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report\u00a0conducted by Marketing Sherpa and sponsored by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_metasync_otto_title":"","_metasync_otto_description":"","_metasync_otto_keywords":"","_metasync_otto_og_title":"","_metasync_otto_og_description":"","_metasync_otto_twitter_title":"","_metasync_otto_twitter_description":"","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_description":"","_yoast_wpseo_title":"","_yoast_wpseo_metadesc":"","_aioseo_title":"","_aioseo_description":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[81,109],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brands","tag-media","tag-social-media"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tridence.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tridence.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tridence.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tridence.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tridence.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tridence.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":969,"href":"https:\/\/tridence.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138\/revisions\/969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tridence.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tridence.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tridence.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}