In the world of social media, a year is a long time, and the social landscape changes dramatically.
In early 2012 we knew it was time to see what had changed, what stayed the same, and where small businesses were heading with their social media program so we conducted another survey.
As we are putting the finishing touches on the white paper, we thought you would enjoy a sneak peak at some of the responses.
In this installment of Survey Says we are look at social media spending.
Many companies talk about the benefits of social media, but few are making significant investments in social media programs. The vast majority (more than 60%) of the companies in our study indicated social media represents less than 5% of their total marketing budget.
About 16% of the respondents didn’t know how much of their budget they were spending. This is not surprising, since many small businesses do not have specific marketing budgets.
In conversations with business owners, they often tell us they do not include the cost of manpower in their calculations of the cost of social media. As a result, we believe their cost estimates are lower than actual expenditures.
Is the investment paying off?
We did not see a strong correlation between the budget percentage and sales results. However, there does seem to be some indication that companies who are spending more of their budget are seeing more traffic coming from social.
One of the unanswered questions: Is this because they are diverting funds from elsewhere so other traffic sources are drying up or is this truly additional traffic.That may be a question for a future study.
Pre-Order Your Copy of the Study
The full study will be available in about a week. Would you like a copy? Simply give us your email address, and we will be sure to send you a link as soon as it is ready.