INSIGHT Despite the Hype, B2B Social Marketing Is Still in ... · Social marketing software and...
Transcript of INSIGHT Despite the Hype, B2B Social Marketing Is Still in ... · Social marketing software and...
Filing Information: April 2012, IDC #234025, Volume: 1
CMO Advisory Service: Insight
I N S I G H T
D e s p i t e t h e H y p e , B 2 B S o c i a l M a r k e t i n g I s S t i l l i n I t s I n f a n c y : 2 0 1 2 G u i d a n c e f o r N e w I n v e s t m e n t D o l l a r s a n d S t a f f
Joseph A. Ferrantino Michael Gerard
Richard Vancil Kathleen Schaub
Gerry Murray
I D C O P I N I O N
Few media shifts have received more attention from marketers than the use of social
media — but are social marketing practices living up to the hype? Social marketing is
still in its infancy but has moved beyond the experimentation phase and started to find
roots and value in B2B marketing. Currently, IDC's CMO Advisory Service
recommends the following:
Don't rush the listening process. IDC is seeing good usage of social marketing
for the key activity of "listening and monitoring." In fact, "just listening" to the
conversations about your company — without even "saying" anything — is an
excellent way to step into this new media. Many companies are rushing this step,
which has limited their ability to meaningfully engage with their targets. Data from
IDC's 2012 Buyer Experience Study shows that buyers are most commonly
found in communities and blogs, making them an excellent source of relevant
conversations.
It's not only about presence, it's about influence. Although 84% of buyers
leverage social networks to keep up with trends and stay connected, only 18.6%
believe that social networks have influenced how they interact with vendors and
make purchase decisions. Thus vendors and buyers inhabit the same spaces,
but social marketing as a more intentional effort to influence buyers still needs
work. While vendors want influence, buyers want value; companies must give
before they expect to receive and focus on creating social marketing interactions
that are highly relevant and provide value to buyers.
Invest and evolve. Continue to invest in social marketing and increase
proficiency. At year-end 2011, marketing departments were allocating 1.3% of
total program spend and 0.7% of staff to social marketing. IDC has been tracking
social marketing proficiency for the past few years, and many companies are
now reporting success in internal support/adoption and scaling/integration — if
your company is not at this level, you are lagging. Cost per impact is a huge
benefit of social marketing because it is capable of providing high impact at a
relatively low cost. Invest and increase proficiency to achieve higher levels of
impact. Refer to IDC's 2012 Social Marketing Maturity Model to gauge your
company's social marketing maturity and find the required steps to increase both
maturity and market impact.
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2 #234025 ©2012 IDC
I N T H I S I N S I G H T
This IDC Insight evaluates social marketing from two perspectives: the buyer and the
vendor. The document begins by focusing on the buyer side to assess how social
marketing influences buyers and how they leverage social networks to stay
connected. Next, IDC discusses general social marketing investment benchmarks on
the vendor side, including operational insights on program spend and staff
allocations. An evaluation of top vendor social marketing successes and challenges
follows as well as a description of IDC's 2012 Social Marketing Maturity Model. The
document ends with a discussion of the future outlook and some essential guidance
that will help put marketers on the path to best practitioner status. Clients of IDC's
CMO Advisory Service should refer to the Related Research section of this document
as well as www.idc.com/eagroup/cmo.jsp for additional insight and guidance on
increasing the impact and productivity of marketing.
S I T U A T I O N O V E R V I E W
I D C ' s C M O A d v i s o r y S e r v i c e S o c i a l
M a r k e t i n g T a x o n o m y
Please note that IDC defines Social Media as a mechanism designed for sharing
through social interaction and using the Internet as a highly scalable and highly
accessible method of distribution. IDC defines a Social Network as a group of
individuals or organizations, either public or private, that are connected to each other
in some way, share information with one another, and collaborate on topics of
interest. Thus a 'tweet' is considered Social Media, and Twitter is a Social Network.
Social Marketing Program Spend
IDC segments social marketing program spend into three categories:
Social marketing software and social marketing automation: Program dollars
spent on tools such as software for communities and blogs, or software
specifically designed to automate social marketing functions
Socialytics (Social data analytics applications): Program spend designated to
"listening software," software that measures and monitors social marketing
impact
Outsourced social marketing spend: Program dollars spent on agency
services specifically for social marketing
Social Marketing Staff
Social marketing staff are internal staff that develop, monitor, and maintain social
networks. IDC segments social marketing staff into four main categories (please note,
one staff member may spend a portion of his/her time on multiple categories):
Infrastructure: These staff are responsible for deploying, maintaining, and
evaluating the social marketing infrastructure.
©2012 IDC #234025 3
Measuring and monitoring: These staff are dedicated to listening to and
extracting intelligence from social marketing platforms.
Responding: These staff are tasked with responding to users on social
networks.
Social marketing campaigns: These staff are focused on designing and
executing social marketing campaigns.
T h e B u y e r S i d e : S o c i a l M a r k e t i n g J u s t
B e g i n n i n g t o I n f l u e n c e I T B u y e r s
IDC's Executive Advisory Group, which is made up of the CMO and Sales Advisory
Services, completed its annual Buyer Experience Study in March 2012. This survey
asked IT buyers a series of questions about the value of social media, the influence of
social networks, and how the buyers are leveraging social networks.
Despite the hype, B2B social marketing is in its infancy based upon vendor dollars
invested as well as buyer influence. Figure 1 illustrates buyer responses in both 2011
and 2012 to the question: "Using the following scale, please rate how valuable each
of the following information delivery formats are to help you consume and learn about
technology in support of your purchase decisions (Scale: 1 = low value, 10 = strongly
prefer)." Social media scored relatively low in this evaluation, with the average
participant scoring it at 4.5 out of 10 in 2012. This is similar to the social media score
of 5.1 fielded in the 2011 version of the Buyer Experience Study.
Figure 2 reveals a similar lukewarm reception to social networks from buyers. In
2012, only 18.6% of respondents stated that social networks have influenced how
they interact with vendors and make purchase decisions. Moreover, buyers' response
to the same question in 2011 was similar at 19.5%. IDC does not believe the slight
decrease year over year here is statistically significant enough to be considered an
actual decrease. IDC has seen no progress in social marketing value (see Figure 1)
or influence (see Figure 2) year over year, which suggests that vendors are still not
successfully engaging buyers.
4 #234025 ©2012 IDC
F I G U R E 1
S o c i a l M e d i a ' s V a l u e i n E d u c a t i n g B u y e r s a n d I n f l u e n c i n g T h e i r P u r c h a s e
D e c i s i o n s , 2 0 1 1 a n d 2 0 1 2
Q. Using the following scale, please rate how valuable each of the following information delivery formats are to
help you consume and learn about technology in support of your purchase decisions. Scale: 1=Low Value,
10=Strongly Prefer
n = 199
Source: IDC's 2011 Buyer Experience Study and 2012 Buyer Experience Study
F I G U R E 2
S o c i a l N e t w o r k s ' I n f l u e n c e o n H o w B u y e r s I n t e r a c t w i t h V e n d o r s a n d M a k e
P u r c h a s e D e c i s i o n s , 2 0 1 1 a n d 2 0 1 2
Q. Have social networks influenced how you (buyers) interact with vendors and make purchase decisions?
n = 199
Source: IDC's 2011 Buyer Experience Study and 2012 Buyer Experience Study
©2012 IDC #234025 5
Figure 3 takes a deeper look at how buyers engage through social networks, and the
results clearly show which channels they leverage most. Sixty-two percent of buyers
visit a business or technology blog at least once per month, and 58% do the same
with communities. Buyers frequent blogs and communities, and vendors must
incorporate this fact into their social marketing strategies. LinkedIn is also a popular
social medium for buyers to explore, with 52% of respondents visiting at least once
per month. Perhaps the most powerful finding here, however, is that only 16% of
buyers stated that they do not leverage any of the social networks in the ways
described in the chart. Thus 84% of buyers are using social networks in one way or
another, which is a clear indicator that opportunity exists.
F I G U R E 3
H o w B u y e r s L e v e r a g e S o c i a l N e t w o r k s , 2 0 1 1 a n d 2 0 1 2
Q. Please indicate how you are leveraging social networks to keep up with business and/or technology trends or to
stay connected with peers and other business contacts.
n = 199
Source: IDC's 2011 Buyer Experience Study and 2012 Buyer Experience Study
T h e V e n d o r S i d e : I n v e s t m e n t a n d P r o f i c i e n c y
S t i l l L i m i t e d , B u t o n t h e R i s e
Social marketing accounts for only a small portion of total program spend and staff
within the marketing organization. As shown in Figure 4, 1.3% of all program spend
and 0.7% of total staff were dedicated to social marketing as of year-end 2011.
However, research from IDC's 2012 Tech Marketing Barometer Study suggests that
these allocations are on the rise in 2012 as companies push their social marketing
proficiency forward.
6 #234025 ©2012 IDC
F I G U R E 4
S o c i a l M a r k e t i n g P r o g r a m S p e n d a n d S t a f f A l l o c a t i o n s i n M a r k e t i n g
O r g a n i z a t i o n s , Y e a r - E n d 2 0 1 1
n = 85
Source: IDC's 2011 Tech Marketing Benchmarks Study
Social Marketing Program Spend Benchmarks
Social marketing accounts for 1.3% of the total program spend mix, but that allocation
is expected to increase in 2012. Data from IDC's 2012 Tech Marketing Barometer
Study reveals that social marketing is the top program spend category expected to
increase in 2012 (see Figure 5). Although it is still too early to tell by what percentage
social marketing program spend will increase in 2012, 65% of respondents are
expecting an increase in investment to some degree. Moreover, only 2% of
respondents are anticipating any decrease in social marketing investment.
IDC's CMO Advisory Service also tracks specific subcategory allocations within social
marketing program spend. According to IDC's Worldwide Sales, Marketing, and
Market Intelligence Taxonomy, 2012: Guidelines for Cost Control and Resource
Allocation (IDC #231252, November 2011), social marketing program spend is broken
into three components: social marketing software and automation, socialytics
(measuring and monitoring), and outsourced social marketing spend.
©2012 IDC #234025 7
F I G U R E 5
E x p e c t e d C h a n g e s t o t h e P r o g r a m S p e n d M i x , 2 0 1 2
Q. Please indicate if investment in the following program spend categories will increase, stay the same, or
decrease in 2012 as compared to 2011.
n = 61
Source: IDC's 2012 Tech Marketing Barometer Study
Figure 6 shows the year-end 2011 benchmarks of these specific social marketing
program spend allocations alongside respondents' thoughts on which categories are
most important in 2012. At year-end 2011, companies were allocating 33.2% of social
marketing program spend to social marketing software and automation, 26% to
socialytics (measuring and monitoring), and 40.8% to outsourced social marketing
spend. In IDC's 2012 Tech Marketing Barometer Study, the CMO Advisory Service
asked respondents to "Please allocate 100 'importance points' to the following three
social marketing program spend categories in 2012: socialytics (measuring and
monitoring), social marketing software and automation, outsourced social marketing,
and other." As shown in the right-hand chart of Figure 6, companies are placing the
most importance on socialytics in 2012, and thus IDC would expect the 26%
socialytics allocation to increase this year. The 17 average importance points
dedicated to the "other" category are also interesting in this chart. Conversations with
participants have revealed that this category is made up of initiatives such as social
marketing training and evangelism.
8 #234025 ©2012 IDC
F I G U R E 6
D e t a i l e d S o c i a l M a r k e t i n g P r o g r a m S p e n d A l l o c a t i o n s : Y e a r - E n d 2 0 1 1 V e r s u s
E x p e c t e d C h a n g e s i n 2 0 1 2
Source: IDC's 2011 Tech Marketing Benchmarks Study and 2012 Tech Marketing Barometer Study
Social Marketing Staffing Benchmarks
At the end of 2011, an average of 0.7% of marketing staff were in a social marketing
role. In 2012, this allocation is expected to increase. As shown in Figure 7, 42% of
respondents to IDC's 2012 Tech Marketing Barometer Study stated that they
anticipate social marketing staffing increases.
IDC's CMO Advisory Service also tracks more detailed social marketing staffing
benchmarks. According to IDC's Worldwide Sales, Marketing, and Market Intelligence
Taxonomy, 2012: Guidelines for Cost Control and Resource Allocation (IDC #231252,
November 2011), social media staff distribute their time between four main areas:
infrastructure, measuring and monitoring, responding, and social marketing
campaigns.
The chart on the left in Figure 8 details the average allocations to each of these
staffing subcategories at the end of 2011, while the right-hand chart shows which
tasks are expected to be most important to respondents in 2012. Staff members
already spend the largest portion of their time on social marketing campaigns, and
this category scored most important with respondents in 2012, suggesting further
increase. Measuring and monitoring also scored important as a staffing category, and
we expect that this allocation will increase in 2012, perhaps at the expense of
infrastructure. Among the least important staffing areas to respondents in 2012 is
infrastructure, which suggests that companies have advanced beyond infrastructure
and are focusing on the more tactical uses of staff such as campaigns and measuring
and monitoring.
©2012 IDC #234025 9
Companies must evaluate their own social marketing aptitude against IDC's
benchmarks and guidance and decide where it is most appropriate to direct new
funds. For instance, if your company has not yet established an expansive listening
infrastructure with staff that are capable of gleaning valuable information, that might
be an area of investment. If that has been achieved, then perhaps responding and
campaigns are the next areas of focus.
F I G U R E 7
E x p e c t e d S t a f f i n g I n c r e a s e s , 2 0 1 2
Q. Please indicate if investment in the following staffing categories will increase, stay the same, or decrease in
2012 as compared to 2011.
n = 61
Source: IDC's 2012 Tech Marketing Barometer Study
10 #234025 ©2012 IDC
F I G U R E 8
D e t a i l e d S o c i a l M a r k e t i n g S t a f f A l l o c a t i o n s : Y e a r - E n d 2 0 1 1 V e r s u s E x p e c t e d
C h a n g e s i n 2 0 1 2
Source: IDC's 2011 Tech Marketing Benchmarks Study and 2012 Tech Marketing Barometer Study
Social Marketing Challenges and Successes
In IDC's 2012 Tech Marketing Barometer Study, participants were asked to describe
both their greatest successes and their greatest challenges with respect to social
marketing.
The top 3 social marketing successes are:
Customer/influencer engagement
Internal support and adoption
Scaling and integration
The top 3 social marketing challenges are:
Measuring ROI and linking to the funnel
Internal support and adoption
Scaling and integration
These qualitative responses are an excellent indicator of social marketing maturity in
the tech industry. Starting at the top, we see the most often achieved success is
customer/influencer engagement, which is one of the first key achievements that
©2012 IDC #234025 11
companies strive toward with social marketing. It appears that companies are very
competent at this. As we have seen in the buyer data, however, what vendors classify
as "engagement" is not synonymous with "influence" — companies still need to work
on influencing buyer purchasing decisions through social marketing.
Next, we move into the swing factors, numbers 2 and 3, which are the same on both
lists — internal support and adoption and scaling and integration. While some
companies reported these as challenges, a nearly equal number reported them as
key successes. This suggests a midpoint — companies that can report significant
successes in internal support and adoption and scaling and integration have passed
the divide and are in the leading category. Those that still consider these to be the
biggest challenges are lagging. Measuring ROI and linking social marketing to the
funnel is currently the biggest challenge and also the next frontier for companies as
they push their social marketing proficiency further.
IDC's 2012 Social Marketing Maturity Model
To assist marketing executives in recognizing their company's social marketing
maturity level and then increase their social marketing effectiveness, IDC has created
a social marketing maturity model (see Figure 9).
F I G U R E 9
I D C ' s 2 0 1 2 S o c i a l M a r k e t i n g M a t u r i t y M o d e l
Source: IDC, 2012
12 #234025 ©2012 IDC
IDC's 2012 Social Marketing Maturity Model describes five stages that companies
progress through on their journey to increase both social marketing maturity and
market impact. The five stages are:
Experimenting: In this phase, social marketing enthusiasts emerge within
marketing departments and begin to experiment with social marketing. These
enthusiasts have no formal social marketing budgets or dedicated staff at their
disposal, along with no defined corporate strategy, policies, guidelines, or
executive sponsorship. Instead, they utilize free tools and attempt to achieve
initial success, and their social marketing impact is low.
Developing: Social marketing enthusiasts evolve into evangelists in this stage
and push their companies to embrace social marketing. Collaboration is difficult
because there are isolated pockets of strategy in various departments and little
or no formal processes. Marketers have some automation tools but budgets are
small and marketers are rarely supported by IT. Initial successes in this stage
help drive broader adoption.
Formal Listening and Formal Communicating: IDC segments Formal
Listening and Formal Communicating into two separate but equal stages.
Chronologically, IDC finds that companies can achieve the most impact by not
rushing the inbound aspect of social marketing, or listening. In the Formal
Listening and Formal Communicating stages companies invest in social
marketing staff and training while usage spreads. Marketing departments achieve
corporate-level executive sponsorship, and guidelines and policies have been
defined. IT is engaged in social marketing and companies invest in socialytics
(social data analytics applications) to enable Formal Listening. Formal Listening
provides intelligence on markets, prospects, and customers, and market
feedback assists in product development. Armed with intelligence gleaned from
inbound social marketing, companies insert their voices into outbound
communications through planned campaigns. These outbound communications
elevate awareness, have increased impact, and begin to influence buyers.
Optimizing: Optimizing is currently the final stage of IDC's Social Maturity
Model. Companies that have achieved this level of proficiency are characterized
by a knowledge sharing culture, an organizational structure that supports social
marketing, and continued investment in dedicated staff, training, and tools.
Socialytics are embedded to support executive decisions, predictive analytics are
in use, and social marketing is integrated with traditional marketing and sales
strategies. The impact of social marketing in this phase is high, and social
marketing asserts its value by providing new leads/customers and increased
loyalty. Although elusive, social marketing ROI is within reach.
Marketing executives should conduct a deep evaluation of their company's social
marketing capabilities and then honestly plot themselves on IDC's 2012 Social
Marketing Maturity Model. This model not only describes the characteristics of each
stage but also provides guidance on the factors that must be achieved in order to
move forward. IDC's CMO Advisory Service can also offer more customized guidance
based on specific company circumstances. Please contact Joseph Ferrantino at
[email protected] for more details.
©2012 IDC #234025 13
F U T U R E O U T L O O K
Social marketing will continue to increase in popularity and importance in the next few
years, which means that companies will need to evolve and keep pushing their social
marketing proficiency forward. Eighty-four percent of buyers are currently utilizing
social networks, and that number is only expected to increase. Social marketing has
the capability to help bridge the information gap between buyers and vendors, and as
investment and proficiency continue to increase in 2012, perhaps this will be the year
that vendors more widely capture buyers' attention.
E S S E N T I A L G U I D A N C E
Results from IDC's 2012 Tech Marketing Barometer Study and 2012 Buyer
Experience Study clearly show that vendors and buyers are inhabiting the same
social media spaces. Yet there seems to be a disconnect — while vendors increased
their social marketing proficiency in 2011, buyers' views on the value and influence of
social marketing remained flat. IDC presents the following essential guidance:
Don't rush the listening process. IDC is seeing good usage of social marketing
for the key activity of "listening and monitoring." In fact, "just listening" to the
conversations about your company — without even "saying" anything — is an
excellent way to step into this new media. Many companies are rushing this
phase, which has limited their ability to meaningfully engage with their targets.
Data from IDC's 2012 Buyer Experience Study shows that buyers are most
commonly found in communities and blogs, making them an excellent source of
relevant conversations.
It's not only about presence, it's about influence. Although 84% of buyers
leverage social networks to keep up with trends and stay connected, only 18.6%
believe that social networks have influenced how they interact with vendors and
make purchase decisions. Thus vendors and buyers inhabit the same spaces,
but social marketing as a more intentional effort to influence buyers still needs
work. While vendors want influence, buyers want value; companies must give
before they expect to receive and focus on creating social media interactions that
provide value to buyers.
Invest and evolve. Continue to invest in social marketing and increase
proficiency. At year-end 2011, marketing departments were allocating 1.3% of
total program spend and 0.7% of staff to social marketing. These numbers are
expected to increase in 2012. IDC has been gauging social marketing proficiency
for the past few years, and many companies are now reporting success in
internal support/adoption and scaling/integration — if your company is not at this
level, you are lagging. Cost per impact is a huge benefit of social marketing
because it is capable of providing high impact at a relatively low cost. Invest and
increase proficiency to achieve higher levels of impact. Refer to IDC's 2012
Social Marketing Maturity Model to gauge your company's social marketing
maturity and find the required steps to increase both maturity and market impact.
14 #234025 ©2012 IDC
L E A R N M O R E
R e l a t e d R e s e a r c h
Social Collaboration for Sales: Cutting Through the Hype (IDC #233340, March
2012)
Hot Topic Call Summary: Preparing for Marketing Automation (IDC #233125,
February 2012)
The Failure of Marketing ROI (IDC #232661, February 2012)
What's Killing the Traditional Funnel? (IDC #232511, January 2012)
Vendor Profile: Qvidian Sales Enablement Playbooks and Proposal Automation
(IDC #231889, January 2012)
Leveraging Sales Enablement to Improve Sales Productivity: A Best Practice
Case Study at T-Systems (IDC #232490, January 2012)
A Cohesive Sales and Marketing Strategy: Real Key Performance Indicators to
Assess Your Investment and Process Alignment (IDC #WC20111208, December
2011)
Sales and Marketing Leadership Meeting Highlights, October 2011: Customer
Panels, Sales Enablement, Lead Management, and IDC Productivity
Benchmarks (IDC #231281, November 2011)
Transforming Lead Management: How the New Buyer Is Killing Your Funnel (and
What to Do About It) (IDC #WC20111117, November 2011)
IDC's Worldwide Sales, Marketing, and Market Intelligence Taxonomy, 2012:
Guidelines for Cost Control and Resource Allocation (IDC #231252, November
2011)
Sales Enablement — 90% Process, 10% Technology: A Best Practice Case
Study of Sales Enablement at Oracle (IDC #230546, October 2011)
IDC's Social Business Taxonomy, 2011 (IDC #230541, October 2011)
Best Practices in Customer Data Management and Customer Record
Management (IDC #229931, August 2011)
The State of Social Software Adoption, An Enterprise View (IDC #229775,
August 2011)
The Buyer Speaks: IDC's 2011 Buyer Experience Survey — Guidance for Sales
and Marketing (IDC #228987, July 2011)
Social Business Maturity Model (IDC #229292, July 2011)
©2012 IDC #234025 15
The Market Intelligence Organization of the Future: Strategic Investments and
Priorities (IDC #228187, May 2011)
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