Social Media Promotion on the Rise

Internet marketing consultants concerned with social media may be pleased to hear one company's predictions that budgets in this area look set to increase industry-wide.

According to the latest chart from Marketing Sherpa, sectors such as education and healthcare, travel and leisure and manufacturing and packaged goods have all admitted that they will be spending more on social media in 2010. For example, while just two per cent of firms involved in education and healthcare plan to lower the amount spent on this, 43 per cent intend to direct more money towards social network advertising.

And brands working in retail and ecommerce appear to be the ones most interested in the advent of social media, with 79 per cent stating they will be seeing their budgets rise in the next 12 months.

Senior analyst with Marketing Sherpa Sergio Balegno noted that these marketing techniques are "relatively new and rapidly emerging" and, as such, its funding typically comes from hikes in the budget as a whole or from other advertising lines. "Social marketing budgets are growing at the expense of other tactics," he said.

Furthermore, the power of social media was recently seen in the battle between the X Factor winner and Rage Against The Machine for the number one spot in the Christmas singles chart. After a Facebook campaign was started by Jon and Tracy Morter, the American rock band eventually beat Joe McElderry by 50,000 sales.

Source: Marketing Sherpa