Thoughts Melange

Risks as well as opportunities exist in how social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube are used as marketing channels. This is one of the central findings from the 2011 Irish Digital Marketing Sentiment Survey, the most extensive of its kind undertaken among Irish marketers.

It also reveals that marketing budgets continue to move online and that print advertising is losing out to advertising on a range of digital channels. Conducted by AMAS in partnership with the Marketing Institute of Ireland (MII), over 400 Irish marketers participated and gave insights into how the internet is affecting them. This is the third such survey conducted by AMAS and the MII and attracted the largest response to date. The sample was drawn from across all sectors of the Irish economy and three out of five participants have budgetary responsibility for the marketing function within their businesses.

Attitudes to social media, both positive and negative, proved to be revealing. Social media is an established part of the marketing armoury and is used primarily for relationship building (84%), to create brand awareness (76%) and for listening to and monitoring online conversations about companies, brands and people (66%).

Asked to consider the impact of social media, Irish marketers recognised benefits such as:
• The ability to understand audiences better (79%)
• Delivering cost savings to the business (46%)
• Providing the opportunity to make valuable connections (68%)

There is an acknowledgement, though, that social media can have downsides such as:
• Increasing a marketer’s workload (64%)
• Concerns about damage to a company’s reputation (51%)
• The challenges of keeping up to date with what is happening in social media (52%)
• A fear of making mistakes on social media sites that cannot be corrected (39%)

Social media is regarded as highly cost-effective, as engagement through these channels does not necessarily mean an investment in a campaign budget. But it has yet to attract significant advertising revenues. In Ireland, as well as globally, social media sites are “under-monetised” – they are not turning the massive scale of their audiences into revenues on the same scale.

Rumours of the death of email are greatly exaggerated. For the third survey in succession,
email is the most popular online marketing format and is used by over two-thirds of participants. This correlates with much anecdotal evidence from Irish eCommerce providers
which report that conversions are highest, and costs are lowest, through email marketing
campaigns.

Social networking sites, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, are the second most popular online marketing format at 55%. YouTube, despite its popularity, is still relatively underdeveloped in commercial terms – the entire video/audio online advertising format is used by only 24% of the survey’s sample. Being found in the maze of online content is a critical requirement for Irish marketers.

Search engine optimisation – the process by which sites can maximise free or organic rankings – is the third most popular online marketing format (52%) with search engine marketing (most likely Google AdWords) being favoured by 36%.

Marketing budgets continue to migrate online. With a third of the respondents are likely to spend between 1-10% of their budgets online, the largest single category of spend. Cumulatively, more than a third of the respondents say they are spending over 21% of their budgets on digital marketing.

Why the shift from traditional to digital channels?
• The ability to engage with customers (75%),
• optimising reach for campaigns (62%)
• and value for money (61%) are the most common reasons given.

Digital’s gain is at the expense of print. Some 43% of the sample said that they have moved their marketing spend away from newspapers, while 41% have moved it away from direct mail. TV, radio, cinema and outdoor have proved to be more resilient.