With Social Networks trying to monetize their robust member bases, many marketers are still wondering how to best get involved. A recent eMarketer article shows that spending on social marketing may still be considered experimental.

What Does it Mean for Marketers?

1. Spending on Social Networks: One-third of US marketers and agencies surveyed in an iMedia Connection poll in March said that they planned to spend $300,000 or less this year on social network marketing – and one-third planned on spending $2 million or more.
2. Advertising is the main revenue driver: With ad spending predicted to $1.6 billion this year and to $2.7 billion by 2011. There are other sources of revenue: subscriptions, premium services and e-commerce to name a few – but ad models still prevail. Enterprise communities like Experts Exchange who have millions of paid members and an abundance of social tools give me hope that we will one day diversify our dependance upon ad dollars in favor of offering high-value services.
3. Social Marketing is being led by cutting edge marketers, and often at smaller companies who are limited in budget and abundant in imagination. Depending on who you believe, its estimated that somewhere between 16%-49% of marketers are currently doing some form of social marketing. Let’s face it, in our quarterly-driven, ROI based corporate environments its not easy to stand up in front of your company and pitch your plan for marketing domination through social media. For the forward-thinking marketer that is willing to take a risk, social marketing can be both exciting and daunting.

   Marketers like George Wright, marketing director at Blendtec came up with the concept for one of the most noteable campaigns leveraging social media. At Blendtec, a small blender company he decided to experiment with video’s when he saw his product testers using extreme methods to test the durability of their products. He created in house-videos at a cost of less than $100 featuring their CEO blending a variety of fun things like garden rakes, iPod, Tiki torches, Glow sticks, Guitar Hero III. They created a site http://www.willitblend.com/ and posted their video’s on You Tube. They then used blogs and other social tactics to create awareness. Within 5 days the videos had over 6 million views, thousands of comments and blender sales were increasing accordingly.

4. Social Marketing for Enterprise is today is mainly focused on adding social tools to already existing web initiatives, but is slowly expanding to more innovative uses. There are many examples of marketers getting high ROI from use of social marketing, but it requires imagination and an ability to think outside of the traditional corporate marketing box…and in some cases an ability to move forward despite skepticism.

The net/ net: A lot more education needs to be done with Enterprise marketers to see the value and potential of social marketing before we will see adoption rise to mainstream levels.