Social Media Poised to Surpass Traditional Marketing

Social media is poised to nudge its way ahead of traditional marketing in the next five years, according to new research. Integrating it into the rest of the marketing plan is still proving challenging for businesses, however.

That the finding of  The American Marketing Association and Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, which surveyed more than 400 top marketers for the February 2011 CMO Survey. They reported that over the next 12 months, social media spending will jump to 9.8 percent of marketing budgets, up from the current level of 5.6 percent. In the next five years, that percentage will increase to 18.1 percent, reported eMarketer Digital Intelligence.

Service companies are planning the biggest increases, with business-to-business as well as business-to-consumer service companies planning to set aside a higher percentage of their budgets for social media.

This marks a major turn of events for service companies. As recently as August, these companies were reporting a decline in social media marketing spending.

Yet while these CMOs are setting aside more of their budgets for social media, they are still working on integrating this newer form of communication into overall business and marketing strategies, eMarketer Digital Intelligence reported.

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