Facebook marketing prioritised within social media plans for 2011

The majority of marketers plan to increase their spend on social media marketing this year, with a focus on Facebook marketing to drive ‘Likes’.

So found a poll of marketers from companies such as Bank of America and Colgate-Palmolive and advertising agency executives conducted by Effie Worldwide and Mashable this February.

Of those surveyed, a striking 70% plan to boost their social media budgets by more than 10% this year. Speaking on behalf of themselves and their clients, respondents forecast spending 11.9% of their overall marketing budgets on social networking, compared with 13% for television. These predictions do not necessarily tally with last year’s ad spend figures from the Internet Advertising Bureau, which showed that $68.7 billion was ploughed into TV advertising last year, compared with just $26 billion spent on online.

Interestingly, Twitter did not take centre stage in the findings, as Facebook marketing was a focus looking forwards. Much of the forecast budget increases will be allocated to attracting Facebook fans, which 35% of those polled cited as their main goal in 2011.

The study also revealed some other interesting findings. When asked to name those brands ‘effectively getting their message across via social media’, the big winners were Old Spice (cited by 15%), Pepsi (8%), Starbucks (7%) and Ford (6%).

As well as targeting Facebook users, respondents also want to prioritise increasing their presence on mobile, while an overwhelming 80% said they were planning either iPad-based advertising and/or an iPad app for 2011.

87% describe social media as ‘important’ or ‘very important’ to hitting their principle marketing goals this year.