Digital Marketers' Buzz on Main ROI Trends

US vs. UK Marketing Executives: this article shows the challenges that both camps are facing when it comes to Marketing ROI, especially when Social Media is at stake. A recent study conducted by Anderson Analytics shows that "Marketing ROI" is the top concept mostly buzzed about among the US Marketing Executives - surpassing “Customer Satisfaction” & “Customer Retention”. Interestingly enough - “Social Media” officially made the top-10 list for the first time this year.(the study was conducted among +1,800 active members of Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG).


1. Social Media ROI - Marketers' Ever-lasting Concern or an Opportunity?

Even though the study revealed that "Social Media" is "one of the buzz words US. marketers are most tired of hearing", most of them recognize the importance of social media marketing, since about 70% of interviewed marketers are planning new social media initiatives in 2010. Below you're welcome to see Top Marketing Buzzwords in US:



These stats show that digital marketing involving its main branches (SEO, Mobile Marketing, Social Media, Blogging, etc) is now highly paid attention to alongside universally acknowledged marketing terms as: Customer Retention, Brand Loyalty, Positioning/Differentiation and Customer Satisfaction.

An other counterpart study was undertaken by The Institute of Direct Marketing (IDM) and Cyance Limited among major UK Marketing Executives(a sincere Thank you note to Mike Housley for sharing the research report). The study showed that 74% of respondents rated the
importance of social media policy/guidelines, but only 28% actually have them.

Moreover, 53.7% actually said they do not know what kind of ROI they are achieving from Social Media. Appearantly the main reason for these feedbacks is the lack of training/knowledge, which translates into a
barrier to their use of social media tools (as seen by 37% of the respondents):



Also, the study showed that SEO, E-mail Marketing, Social Media and Affiliate Marketing are the most important to UK Marketers in terms of marketing ROI:



2. Marketing Budget Change:

In regard to budgets, marketing executives at larger firms are somewhat less optimistic than those at smaller firms.

These findings belong to Andersen Anaytics, which also revealed that fewer marketing executives believe their use of marketing research will be reduced in 2010 than was the case in 2009. Moreover, company size does not appear to be a significant factor in planned usage of market research:



Obviously, digital marketing raises in importance driving companies to change their marketing budgets, whereas in terms of digital marketing ROI, there aren't yet universally accepted metrics, which might help standardise the costs and thus, regulate marketing budgets. For example, the UK report shows that most companies aren't yet measuring their social media activities:



How about your organisation? Have you been using Social Media for business purposes? Would apprecuiate your voice on our related Poll: What are the Main Benefits of Social Media for Business? (see on the right-hand side of the main page).

Next on our Digital Lunch menu: Personalization - the Tool to Leverage E-Mail Relevance and Sales.

Yours,
Digital Lunch Team
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