Budgets on the line as bosses demand social receipts

Budgets on the line as bosses demand social receipts. Growing investment in social exposes it to new levels of scrutiny. Confidence in the ROI of social media marketing is at an all-time high.

Social media has spent over a decade fighting to prove its place in the marketing mix—and it’s decisively found it. Marketers’ confidence in the value of social media marketing is at an all-time high. Last year, 83% of marketers in our social media trends survey reported having some level of confidence in the return on investment (ROI) of social media, up from 68% the year before.

This year, we got more specific and asked how confident marketers were that social media was useful for marketing to or engaging with their audience. A whopping 96% of marketers reported some level of confidence. It should come as no surprise that almost every social media marketing practitioner we surveyed says social media marketing has value.

But what’s telling is that this confidence is clearly reflected in the proportion of the marketing budget allocated to social. While marketing budgets have climbed to nearly 10% of total company revenue in 2022 (up from 6% in 2021), they still lag pre-pandemic levels. Spend on social media relative to pre-pandemic levels is going up too—and it’s predicted to increase steadily over the next five years.

More visibility means more scrutiny Social media’s newfound visibility has the potential to open it to higher levels of scrutiny— especially as leadership whips out the magnifying glass over the coming year. During market downturns, many execs will look to shore up costs and manage expenses as much as possible. And in the marketing depart- ment, the pressure will fall on individual contributors and middle managers to clearly demonstrate the value they bring to the table.

This is where social media practitioners run into problems. Our survey found that, when it comes to social media, seniority has a major impact on how individuals perceive and demonstrate the value of social..