Christine Moorman is the Director of The CMO Survey and the T. Austin Finch, Sr. Professor of Business Administration, The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University.

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Measuring Social Media ROI: Companies Emphasize Voice Metrics

May 23rd, 2013

The influential economist Albert O. Hirschman argues that customers can have a disciplining effect on companies and markets through their exit and voice behaviors. Instead of simply “quitting” a product, Hirschman urged customers to voice their complaints so companies could improve and learn. Hirschman would be a happy camper these days because social media puts a megaphone on the voice of the customer. Results from The CMO Survey® show that companies, in turn, are also starting to see the value of emphasizing voice-based metrics.

The CMO Survey® investigated which metrics companies are using to measure the impact of social media investments. In August 2010 and then again in February 2013, top marketers were asked to share which metrics they use to evaluate social media. Looking across the results, we can see which metrics companies most often use. The survey did not, however, ask respondents to rank or rate each metric in terms of importance. (more…)

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Do Marketers Know What They Want From Social Media?

March 17th, 2013

Social media spending as a percentage of marketing budgets will more than double over the next five years according to new results from The CMO Survey. Responses from 468 top marketers in February indicate that companies are spending 8.4 percent of their budgets on social media. Over the next year, that number is expected to increase to 11.5 percent, and in the next five years it will reach 21.6 percent.

Looking back to the first time I asked these questions in August 2009, the levels were 3.5 percent of current budgets and expected to increase to 6.1 percent over the next year and 13.7 percent over the next five years. The increase in current spending from 3.5 percent to 8.4 percent alone represents a 140 percent increase in the last 3 years. No other part of the marketing budget has grown so much in such a short amount of time. In fact, during the same time period, traditional advertising has continued to plummet. It was decreasing by 7.9 percent per year three years ago and continues to drop 2.7 percent in the current year.

The dramatic increases in social media spending were universal across different business sectors: B2B-product, B2B-services, B2C-products, and B2C-services. The B2C-product sector, which includes companies such as Procter & Gamble and The Coca-Cola Company, expects the most dramatic increase, from 9.6 percent to 24.6 percent (see Table 1). (more…)

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New Results from The CMO Survey

February 26th, 2013


Watch the video above to see and hear Chris Moorman discuss the results.

Full results, including the “Highlights and Insights” report, are available on the results page.

Chris Moorman’s post about these results can be found at:  blogs.forbes.com/christinemoorman/

Six Reasons Marketing Budgets are on the Rise

November 1st, 2012

Marketing budgets as a percent of overall firm budgets and as a percent of firm revenues are both on the rise as noted in my prior post. Why are firms spending more on marketing? Here are six reasons I see in The CMO Survey™ data and in my research.

  1. New jobs: Marketing appears to be taking a leadership role in managing social media activities in companies. Given social media spending as a percent of marketing budgets is expected to rise from 7.6% to 18.8% over the next 5 years, this means new funds are flowing toward marketing.
  2. New skills: Companies plan to increase marketing training by 3.7% in February 2012 to 7.2% in August 2012. In particular, I see many companies in investing in programs to build marketing capabilities. A good example is GE’s Experienced Commercial Leadership Program, which develops cohorts of young marketers for the company. Another example is Becton Dickinson’s Marketing Excellence Initiative, which provides non-marketers with a big dose of training in key marketing tools and processes.
  3. New knowledge: Big Data has captured the imaginations of leaders in companies big and small. The ability to leverage information about customers in order to deliver and demonstrate value opens the door for marketers to fill the role as analysts and “data whisperers” as McKinsey calls them. As noted by McKinsey in its Chief Marketing and Sales Officer forum, “Data whisperers are those analysts who can coax meaning and insights from the increasingly sophisticated and massive data sets available today.” (more…)

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The Social Media Integration Gap

March 13th, 2012

Last week I reported on the expected increase in social media spend from an already high 7.4% of marketing budgets to 10.4% within a year and 19.5% within five years. It is therefore both interesting and somewhat disturbing that we continue to see a sizable fissure between what companies are doing with social media and what they are doing with the rest of their strategies. I asked CMOs to rate “How effectively is social media integrated with your firm’s marketing strategy” on a seven point scale where 7 is “very integrated” and 1 is “not at all integrated.” Results from The CMO Survey indicate an average score of 3.8 with a standard deviation of 2.0. Sadly, only 7 percent of respondents believe that social media is “very integrated” to the firm’s strategy while 18.4% rated social media as “not at all integrated.” The full distribution of responses is shown in Figure 1.
(more…)

Social Media Spend Continues to Soar

March 6th, 2012

Results from The CMO Survey, February 2012 indicate that marketers continue to increase spend on social media. In the next 5 years, marketers expect to spend 19.5% of their budgets on social media, almost three times more than the current level! Within a year, marketers expect to spend 10.8% of their budgets on social media. These figures deserve a deeper investigation into what has been happening over time. First, social media spend, as a percent of marketing budgets has continued to increase over the last 2.5 years I have been measuring these levels in The CMO Survey. From the initial level of 3.5% in August 2009, we have witnessed an 111% increase to the current levels at 7.4% (see Figure 1).
(more…)

Investing in Social Media

January 10th, 2012

The August 2011 CMO Survey reported that companies are increasing spend on social media (from current levels of 7.1 percent of marketing budget to 10.1 percent over the next year and to 17.5 percent in the next five years). These are big numbers and they have been waved around a lot on the internet. What’s striking to me is these same companies report that they employ, on average, only two people dedicated to actually doing social media (standard deviation 4.8). Houston, we have a problem—well, maybe three problems. (more…)

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Social Media and Strategy: How to Integrate

September 27th, 2011

In the social media integration report card, I offered a set of company behaviors that we can use to diagnose how well a firm integrates social media into its strategy. These behaviors range from integrating social media with customer management, brand management, and innovation management to monitoring information flows within the company. (more…)

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A Social Media Integration Report Card

September 20th, 2011

Is your company being strategic about social media?

The August 2011 CMO Survey reported that companies are increasing spend on social media (from current levels of 7.1 percent of marketing budget to 10.1 percent over the next year and to 17.5 percent in the next five years). (more…)

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Fasten Your Social Media Seatbelts: Marketers Ready for Full Take-off

September 6th, 2011

Is social media just a tool kids can use to communicate with their friends, or is there some marketing advantage? For years, marketers have been grappling with if and how social media should be deployed. Numerous findings are showing a definitive answer: marketers are embracing social media in major ways—most notably their budgets. (more…)

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