Marketing Sherpa and Mashable’s study confirms the phenomenon of Social Media Revolution and its ever increasing budget spend!

Social Media and its ever increasing budget have been talked about for a while now. Surveys have confirmed the phenomenon too. According to our partners; Marketing Sherpa’s, recent research by Kaci Bower, budgets for online tactics continue to grow, with social media benefiting most from this continued shift to online spending.

MarketingSherpa found that for every one organization decreasing social marketing spending in 2011; more than 32 organizations would be increasing their allocated spending. This is clearly a positive indicator for marketers, mainly Social Media Marketers. Statistics below take a more specific look into these percentage changes in this week’s chart from more than 3,300 marketers in the industry.

Here is the key summary of the report:

–          Non-existent cutbacks on the spending of social media marketing budgets

–          More than two-thirds of organizations are increasing their social marketing expenditures in 2011

–          Significant increase of 20% in B2B marketing budgets as opposed to B2C, which is more participatory

–          The retail and e-commerce sector, software, professional services and the education industries are most likely to double their social media budgets this year

–          Retailers have started to depend heavily on the use of social media during the purchasing process, by influencing customers in their research and decisions and driving them to e-commerce sites for conversion

The chart above chart is best explained by the summary and Marketing Sherpa’s Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report.

Here are few more Statistic from Mashable’s study by Todd Wasserman regarding Most Social Media Marketers Increasing Social Media Spend this year.

–          Brands that were cited for “effectively getting their message across via social media” include Old Spice (chosen by 15%), Pepsi (8%), Starbucks (7%) and Ford (6%)

–          50% of respondents said they use a mix of in-house and agency to handle social media outreach

–          80% said they were planning iPad-based advertising and/or an iPad-based app this year, while 20% said they were “not planning much” of either

–          87% said social media was “important” or “very important” to achieving their biggest marketing goal this year