Chief Marketing Officers not yet interested in Social Media
According to a recent study by Epsilon, it appears that despite the impressive growth that both Facebook and MySpave have seen since 2003, chief marketing officers (CMO) at leading brands are not too interested in using social media in their marketing mix.
The numbers
Epsilon’s survey shows that 22% of CMO were not too interested, while a staggering 33% were not interested at all in incorporating social networking in their strategies.
Only 10% are already using these new media. Paradoxically however, 27% of the CMO surveyed actually believe that social networking sites is valuable in a time of cost cutting.
Other medias
Forums, webcasts/podcats, email and blog are still the weapon of choice for those who took part in the study. Email attracts the interest of almost half of them and is the channel that will be less impacted by budget reduction.
Where’s the ad economic model?
Social media might be the current frenzy, no one seems to have yet found a proper way to advertise on them. Facebook only runs ads on the side, as MySpace is doing. Twitter has yet to decide whether or not it wants ads on the site -it only hinted at adding them to the search engine à la Google-.
People accessing Google are looking for search terms and might easily be derived to the right hand pane or the top sponsored results. People accessing social networking site are all about the community, about their friends. It’s a very focused, if not egocentric, experience that will force marketers and engineers alike to find innovative ways to talk to the customer.
This is the battle of 2009.
