Customer Experience

By adaptive - January 29th, 2014

2014 will be a year where digital marketing takes a quantum leap forward. Corporations need to understand how social media is an integral component of their digital marketing activities

What are the goals your corporation has set across the digital marketing channels it currently uses? For many enterprises it will be business as usual, but this lack of development insight will be a major barrier to growth this year. With mobile channels rapidly developing that will leverage social media to new heights to interaction with consumers, setting goals and developing a roadmap to attain those ambitions is vital.

Research from Webmarketing123 illustrates that while digital gains much of the debate across businesses, it still receives only a quarter of the available digital marketing budget. Tellingly, the fact that 80% of respondents to the State of Digital Marketing 2014 survey have difficulty measuring ROI is a clear factor in the low allocation of resources that digital channels continue to receive. However, this view is improving with 1 in 5 B2B and 1 in 3 B3C markers stating that they see revenue from social media, but it remains difficult to quantify these gains.

For corporations to actively and constructively leverage their social media activity, this has to be placed into the context of their wider digital marketing. A broader understanding of the global reach of social media is vitally important to appreciate. We Are Social looked closely at how social media is structured across key geographical regions. Understanding how a corporate social media message will penetrate its target market is essential data to understand.

As the social media landscape has changed, so has the profile of the groups that are active across these networks. Where Facebook reined supreme, how content is being created and shared is changing the dynamics of the social media environment. Facebook is still a clear leader in this sector, but Google+ continues to rapidly develop, as do visual curation sites with Pinterest a clear leader here.

For corporations, a deeper understanding of how their digital marketing activity must also appreciate the ebb and flow of the social media space will ensure each message is timely and relevant.

What has become clear over the last year is that social media may seem like a moving target, but with correctly allocated resources, marketing messages can be heard – and more importantly – acted upon by the world’s social media users.

2014 State of Digital Marketing – An infographic by the team at Webmarketing123