Social Media Gains Ground in Holiday Marketing Campaign

When it comes to holiday advertising budgets, while print is still the big winner, social and online channels are growing stronger this season, say research results from BDO USA quoted by eMarketer. According to a recent survey, nearly 27% of retailers said they would spend most of their budget for the holiday season online, including on social network marketing. This means an almost 10% growth from last year’s 18% of retailers making a similar statement regarding ad spending. It also puts online ahead of broadcast for the second consecutive year.

Another very important result is the fact that 75% of respondents said they had included social networks in their marketing strategy, a significant increase from 2009’s 51%. In the majority of cases we are talking small percentages of the overall marketing of total marketing effort invested into social networks, but what’s very promising is the nearly 18%  who said at least 20% of their efforts were directed at social media, with Facebook leading in social marketing channels, followed from afar by Twitter and other social networks.

BDO USA are not alone in their findings, as other research companies back their data. More companies are planning to use social media marketing this holiday season, according to a September survey conducted on US online retailers by Shop.org, and recent brand surveys on food we reviewed from Hunter PR as well as Kaplow PR.  The top changes will see increased use of digital public relations campaigns