CMOs are upping their spend on social media but not integrating it into their strategy [#ChartoftheDay]

Investing in social is all well and good, but you need a strategy first if you want it to get results

New data from the CMO's survey of 2016 report shows how major companies are planning on big increases in social media spending in coming years, yet are failing to properly integrate it into their digital strategies.

As you can see from the table below, social media spending is set to double from 10% of marketing budgets to 20% in coming years. B2C services are the biggest social spenders, with a full quarter of marketing budgets to be allocated to social by 2021.

When asked about how effectively their companies are integrating their social media efforts with the overall marketing strategy CMOs are pretty damning. Although there has been a very slight uptick of the past couple of years.

Despite the slight improvement, things are still pretty dire. Only a very small percentage of CMOs must consider their social media to be well integrated into their marketing strategy if the average rating is only 4.2 (out of 7). This only reinforces the need for businesses to spend more time devising a proper strategy and plan for social media, rather than trying to use it first and planning later.

• Source: CMOSurvey.org
• Sample: 289 CMOs in major US businesses