Marketing Budgets Allocated to Using Social Media to Build Customer Loyalty Increase 293%

According to a June – July email survey of 369 U.S. marketers — consisting of loyalty marketing firm COLLOQUY subscribers and Direct Marketing Association members — U.S. companies that use social media primarily to deepen customer loyalty spend almost twice as much as companies who use it for brand awareness, customer acquisition and other core marketing purposes.

According to the survey, the average social media spend for marketers whose primary objective is customer loyalty was $88,000 last year, compared to $53,000 for those whose objective is brand awareness, and $30,000 for customer acquisition.  The amount of social media budget marketers allocated to loyalty objectives also increased the most, increasing by 293% over the past 12 months, easily surpassing allocation increases for all other social media-related marketing objectives.

When asked what percentage of their company’s overall marketing budget is spent on social media, the largest group, 24% of survey takers, selected “don’t know,” while 33% selected 5% or less.   Smaller companies are significantly more likely than large companies to say they spend almost 50% of their marketing budget on social media.

Asked to identify the most important measure of social media success, nearly two-thirds of respondents selected “don’t know.”  Of those who identified a measurement, 20% said “engaging customers to respond and provide feedback.”  65% of respondents said they’re not using any listening tools to monitor what their customers are saying about their brand.

Read more and purchase a copy of the report at the COLLOQUY web site.