Social Media Marketing Trends Reveal Uncertainty for B2B and B2C Marketers (INFOGRAPHIC)

By John Delaney, Morrison & Foerster LLPAttention, social media marketers: your first infographic novel has arrived.Law firm Morrison & Foerster has produced a multi-part infographic highlighting key trends for B2B and B2C marketers on their use of social media.Marketers will find a well-plotted story – they’ll laugh, they’ll cry, or at least find something relevant for their brands.The graphic, showing some conflicting trends from nearly two dozen news and information sources across the industry, reflects considerable turmoil and uncertainty right now around social media marketing in both the B2B and B2C sectors.  Although companies continue to spend more money on this channel as consumers increasingly rely on social media for their information, many are still trying to figure out best in class strategies and measurements.Among a few key stat lines from MoFo’s infographic on social media marketing:

• Overall US spending on social media marketing continues to climb, exceeding $7.5 billion in 2014.  Two-thirds of companies surveyed by Adweek report having a dedicated social media team.
• Despite the massive usage of Facebook among all branded marketers, Pinterest is actually much more popular for many businesses, especially luxury brands and online specialty retailers.
• Smaller brands remain laggards in adopting mobile marketing – only 22% of small businesses report using a mobile app, compared to 89% of the top global brands.
• As companies see a decline in search, blog usage is also slipping: 67% of North American consumer marketers report using blogs in 2015, vs. 72% a year ago.
• Everyone has their own way of measuring success in social media marketing, but Adweek picks some surprise winners – including the NBA (best on Twitter); Red Bull (best use of hashtag); GoPro (best on Instagram); Lowe’s (best on Vine); and Jetsetter (best on Pinterest).
• More social media spending by brands does not always translate into more engagement. Socially Aware cites the pronounced drop in reported user interactions with marketers on two of the biggest platforms, Instagram and Twitter. Only Facebook seems to be generating more brand interaction with consumers.
• Even when consumers do engage, marketers often drop the ball. MoFo’s pull of recent surveys shows that 90% of enterprises use social media to respond to customer service inquiries, yet nearly 60% of consumers tweeting about a bad experience never heard back from the offending company.  And the average response time of brands responding to user comments or complaints on Twitter is nine hours – snail’s time in today’s stopwatch social media environment.
• Marketers confess that ROI has been less than stellar: nearly half of top marketers surveyed by the Wall Street Journal said they were unable to demonstrate a direct impact on their business from social media – only 15% of marketing officers could show a quantitative effect on their company’s business.
• And still, bullishness prevails, reflected in near-term spending projections. US B2B marketers are expected to commit more than $100 billion to social media advertising by 2017; digital advertising is projected to catch up to TV ad spending by the following year.
• Also encouraging are certain key indicators that the top platforms do get the job done to some degree. MoFo cites that 54% of B2B marketers say they’ve generated valid sales leads from social media; among consumers, 72% of those who follow a brand on Twitter said they were more likely to be loyal when it comes to purchasing.
• Most promising of all may be a stat from Iron Paper noting that for online merchants, the average customer order influenced by social media was a robust $143 in 2014. For sellers geared up for the current holiday season, that’s a good number to beat.

[author]About the Author:   John Delaney is a longtime technology transactions lawyer and partner with Morrison & Foerster in New York. Mr. Delaney heads the firm’s social media practice and edits the firm’s award-winning blog Socially Aware, which reports on the convergence of social media and the law.  He can be reached at jdelaney@mofo.com  [/author]