Although almost all marketers make use of social media – ranging from branded Facebook and Twitter accounts to blogs, forums and paid ad placements – more of these campaigns fail than succeed.
Forrester forecasts that US marketers alone will spend $4,8-billion on social marketing tactics in 2013 and marketers throughout the world will add billions more to that figure.
What’s more, new Forrester data shows that 60% of marketers will increase their social budgets this year, many by a significant amount.
Yet, despite the social hype, many (68%) say the channel simply doesn’t offer enough return on investment (ROI), and measurement challenges often create obstacles to delivering value.
“The sobering reality is that nearly a decade into the era of social media, more social marketers are failing than succeeding,” writes Forrester vice-president and principal analyst Nate Elliott.
Big name brands such as Best Buy and Pepsi have faced such failure, and Elliott says the list goes on and on.
“Social exceptionalism” can be pinpointed as the problem, Elliott says.
“Rather than recognising that social is just another marketing channel, many marketers see it as unique.”
As a result, they keep social completely separate from other marketing efforts or, worse, expect social to carry the weight of an entire marketing programme.
The solution, Elliott believes, is that marketers need to understand how social media supports each part of the customer journey.
That means not just offering engagement, but also enabling discovery and supporting exploration and purchase with social – what Forrester calls social reach, social depth and social relationships.
