Latest RSW/US Agency New Business Survey: Social Media-You’re Doing It Wrong

A post from our latest survey, released this week ( Download 2011 New Business Report: Client & Agency Perspective On Topics Related To Agency New Business here) and this one on, yes, social media.

Has it been beaten to death yet?

Why aren’t you using it, should you be using it-we’ve covered this ground. But it is ground worth covering.

And it would seem agencies are, in fact, embracing social media, but based on stats from our survey, for all the wrong reasons.

Are You Posting About Kittens?

Agencies appear to be wasting time, or are putting too much time, into social media when it’s doing very little for their new business efforts.

Distilling three questions and their results from the agency survey:

-Social media is amongst the bottom of the list of marketing tools most effective at generating new business.

-“To what extent do you use social media to prospect for new business”: the results lie mostly right in the middle, so not used for new business to a great extent.

-“What percent of your new business revenue over the past year has come in to the agency as a result of your social media outreach (as best you can tell)?”: Overwhelmingly the answer is 10% or less

Okay-so what?  Well, all this comes into context when you look at this question and result:

-“How would you characterize your agency’s involvement in social media?’ (1=Not very involved at all and 10=Very active in many different social media spaces):

The numbers all fall in the 7-10 range, so they’re pretty heavily involved.

Huh?

Why are they involved though, when the numbers pan out that social media really isn’t bringing in new business as well as almost every other method.  They’re on Twitter and Facebook, etc. but apparently not for the right reasons.

The client side of our survey bears this out as well.

Looking at the following client-side results:

-The preferred method of contact from agencies overwhelmingly is mail and email, not social media.

-Overwhelmingly marketers do not follow agencies via social media channels

-They also don’t read agency blogs with great frequency.

Don’t Stop Believin’

That’s not to say agencies should stop blogging, for example.

Looking at the question, “How often do Agencies send you value-added information (e.g. interesting/helpful articles, white papers, research studies) that is helpful to your day-to-day marketing activities,” the results show agencies basically aren’t doing this with any regularity.

So blogging, for example, can still be a valid source for value-added information-if you activate it.  And as an agency, you apparently need to be getting that to marketers more often.

If you’re blogging , Tweeting, etc.-do it with a purpose.

Specifically, new business for the agency.

Otherwise, I hope that hobby is billable.