2013 is the year of the Like, Tweet, Share, Connect. Facebook added 100 million users in less than nine months; Twitter has 190 million unique visitors every month, and nearly four in five active U.S. internet users visit social networks and blogs. Accordingly, social media marketing has gained significant popularity amongst brands and advertising agencies.
As the popularity of social networking sites grow, many advertisers are asking two important questions: is this recent shift in marketing strategy well-founded, and what percentage of their marketing budget should be allocated to social media management? While it’s still hard to quantify the ROI of social media marketing specifically, let’s look at some recent statistics to shed some light on what percentage--if any--of one's marketing budget should be allocated to social media management.
Efficacy of Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing has been proven to be extremely effective both in generating and converting leads. In 2011 alone, 36% of all marketers surveyed in a HubSpot Reportreported that they had found a customer via Twitter and 52% of marketers had found a customer via Facebook. Perhaps more importantly, the same 2011 report noted that social media lead conversion rates are 13% higher than the average lead conversion rate. Those are impressive numbers considering most en vogue social media sites are—on average—about eight years old. As these sites continue to grow in popularity, marketing strategists have begun increasing the percentage of marketing budgets allocated to social media.
