Social Media explosion. What’s next?

With the recent explosion of social media marketing - the area within marketing which describes online tools and platforms used by consumers to share insights, opinions and experiences with each other – comes the question: how much should marketers budget for future campaigns?

by Patricia Bates

To answer this question, Jupiter Research, a division of Kagan Research, a thought leadership and media business research group, specialized in the areas of internet and emerging consumer technologies, has recently published a concept report entitled “Viral Marketing – Budgeting Beyond Social Media”.

The report calls attention to the fact that social media has grown exponentially in the past year, creating new customer acquisition opportunities, especially via viral advertising.

As per summary posted on Jupiter’s website, the study addresses the following key questions:

- What tactics will viral marketers use in the coming year?
- How will consumers react to new viral marketing tactics?
- What steps can viral marketers take to capitalize on consumers seeking more information?

Marketers now should decide how much of their budgets should be spent on viral marketing. According to Emily Riley, analyst at Jupiter Research, viral marketing used to happen by word of mouth, but now is happening online, which has forced professionals to increase to up to 40% their expenditure on online marketing.