In the next 5 years, social media is expected to grow so much that it will take up 20.9% of marketing budgets, according to a recent CMO survey. Right now, only 3.4% of marketers report that social media contributes significantly to a better performance, and 40% report below average contributions. What is causing the disconnect between social media marketing and traditional marketing?

To begin with, most companies have not fully integrated social media into the rest of their marketing plans. By not integrating basic things like customer information with customer social media contact information, companies run the risk of losing current customers and failing to acquire new ones. Oversights like these force businesses to do twice the work for a significantly smaller gain.

For many businesses, social media is too new a field for them to record its impact on their own. In most cases, social media expertise is not embedded in marketing teams, which leads them to hire social media partners or try to spread the burden of an unfamiliar field on their already existing marketing team. Social media is a complex and vastly uncharted field that can really only be conquered by trial and error. This fact, combined with many companies’s lack of social media definite goals makes it difficult to pin down a social media model for success.

Businesses need to experiment with social media and find their own niche. But before all else, businesses need to set clear goals, integrate their social media strategy with their traditional marketing plan, and market to their customer base’s platform of choice.

Sourcing via Forbes.