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.

I once sat in a meeting where the company’s in-house digital marketing executive reported on social performance and was delighted that they get N likes on an average for their posts on Instagram. The team decided this was a success as they were achieving their goal of ‘building brand awareness’.

However, on closer inspection, the e-commerce website had hardly seen any traffic increase from these sources.Unfortunately, the business was unable to justify the role of their in-house digital team as they could not see any social media RoI.

Why Did this Happen?

Not setting social media goals is one of the biggest social media mistakes marketers make. But setting vague goals which are not relevant for the business would be like setting yourself a trap.

In this case, the digital team and the business both had a common goal i.e to increase brand awareness. But they failed to define it in a meaningful way.

In the absence of well defined social media goals, the team was unable to point to specific actions and steps to be taken to meet their business’ needs. They got distracted by the good-looking reports instead of measuring performance to meet their business’ needs and justify their role.

Key social media goal setting mistakes they made

The goal was not specific.

What does “increase awareness” mean? Does it mean more followers? Or does it mean making more people interested in learning about your product?

Also, how much better do you want to get at it? You want new followers or an increase in traffic on product pages?

The goal did not have any metric

“Increase Facebook followers” or “increase web traffic” is fine, but it needs some kind of a metric and there should be a way to measure it.

So you could say ‘I need 1000 new Facebook followers ….’ or ‘I want a 20% increase in website traffic……’ . Both are measurable, the former one from FB insights and the latter one from Google Analytics.

The goal was not time bound

When goals are not time bound, there is no accountability for progress.

Coming back to your goal, you could say “I want to increase FB followers to 1000 by end of the month’ or ‘I want to increase website traffic by 20% by the end of the quarter’.

The S.M.A.R.T goal framework

The S.M.A.R.T goal framework helps in structuring the growth objectives in a way that’s clear, trackable and helps in planning actions and steps to achieve those goals.

SMART is an acronym that stands for

Specific: Well defined, clear, and unambiguous
Measurable: With specific criteria that measure your progress towards the accomplishment of the goal
Achievable: Attainable and not impossible to achieve
Realistic: Within reach, realistic, and relevant to your larger business objectives.
Timely: With a clearly defined timeline

As a social media marketing strategist, my role was to assess the current situation, set SMART goals and prepare a strategic social media plan for this business. The client’s in-house digital team was then aligned to the updated social media marketing strategy.

The writer works as a social media marketing strategist at the branding agency OH! Design Studio. OH! Design Studio is an integrated creative and digital agency based in Mumbai, India.

Looking for a social media agency? LetsTalk@ohdesignstudio.com

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Why Are CMOs Increasing Their Social Media Investments?

So Why are CMOs Doubling their Social Media Investments now?

Why An In-House Social Media Team Almost Got Fired