Lopez Research in conjunction with The Software Industry Association (SIIA) recently surveyed 106 marketing executives about their company’s use of email, mobile marketing and social media to build their brand, gain leads, and improve customer support. The findings were quite interesting. While social media is driving a small portion of revenue and engagement today, almost 90% of companies believe social media marketing will benefit business. As a result, many firms are investing in numerous social media channels that range from blogs, to Twitter to LinkedIn. The survey results indicate that companies which service B2B firms are as interested in social media as companies that service business to consumer (B2C) firms with roughly 90% of all respondents stating they are using social media marketing. This is a far cry from several years ago where many businesses were questioning the value of social media.
Social media marketing has matured to the point where companies are looking at a mix of quantitative ROI measures such as revenue and web site traffic but also qualitative measures such as brand awareness. Time spent on social media marketing varies widely by companies but many are spending under 10 hours per week on these efforts. To date, most marketers are still managing their social media efforts themselves. While many businesses will continue to do their own posts, Lopez Research expects social media analytics to be an area where many firms will consider purchasing a managed service.
As expected, email marketing continues to be a main marketing tool for a majority of the companies interviewed. Mobile marketing use was low amongst the respondents, which isn’t surprising given that a high percentage of companies surveyed serve the business-to-business (B2B) and business to government (B2G) groups. A majority of the respondents, 88%, stated their primary geographic market is in North America but only 12% of the respondents considered consumers part of their target market segmentation. In general, Lopez Research believes mobile marketing is in its infancy and will experience double-digit growth over the next two years. It will be interesting to see how social media and mobile marketing evolve as tools for B2C and B2B communications.
