According to the CMO Survey report 2019 (see footnote), CMOs are increasing the social media marketing spends.
This, as per the survey, is inspite of a relatively modest contribution of social media to enterprise performance.
So Why are CMOs Doubling their Social Media Investments now?
Following reasons have been identified for this trend in 2019:
1. Social media can provide powerful insights about the consumers. Beyond the engagement, social media help in sentiment analysis,measuring online behaviour of consumers and brand engagement.
2. Social media is made for mobile and mobile is the future of consumer engagement. Visual content and short updates are apt for social media and consumers interact with this bite-size chunks throughout the day using their mobile devices. That not only helps in building consumer profile but also amp up the marketers’ reach though post likes, shares and comments. Esp. the latter part is not possible with digital advertising.
3. Social media engagement and ad reinforcement is more memorable than the extremely costly digital advertising. As consumers are exposed to so many ads per day, it’s unlikely for individual interactions to realise returns.
4. Social media as a platform can be controlled and is relatively low-cost to operate. Companies can continually test campaigns on their platform, get immediate results, and scale successful outcomes.
Note: According to this survey, outside social media agencies continue to play an important role in guiding social media activities in companies, with this survey recording the highest level of engagement in several years.
The CMO Survey is sponsored by the American Marketing Association, Deloitte and Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
