Too often, marketers wonder whether their social marketing efforts are keeping pace with those of their peers. Marketers in China are no exception. My most recent report, Benchmarking Social Marketing Efforts In China, will help them find the answer and optimize their social marketing strategies.

Overall, marketers in China show lots of faith in social media. Thirteen of 22 marketers we surveyed say they will increase their social media budget more than 25% in 2013 compared with 2012, and seven of them will increase it more than 50%.

However, they report only moderate satisfaction — on a scale of 1 (very dissatisfied) to 5 (very satisfied), we found an average satisfaction rating of 3.4 with the social tactics they are using and an average rating of 3.27 with social platforms. Based on these adoption and satisfaction ratings, we have categorized the social tactics and platforms that marketers use in China into four groups:

  • Essential: high adoption and satisfaction. These social tactics and platforms, such as branded social profiles and Sina Weibo, are marketers’ ideal choices.
  • Promising: low adoption but high satisfaction. These social tactics and platforms, such as Douban and reviews on companies’ own websites, are emerging, and their marketing value is not yet proven, but satisfaction among marketers now using them bodes well.
  • Overvalued: high adoption but low satisfaction. These social tactics and platforms, such as Renren, while widely used, fall short of marketers’ expectations.
  • Experimental: low adoption and satisfaction. These social tactics and platforms, such as Jiepang and paying key opinion leaders (KOLs), are in a risky “gray area” — although satisfaction with them is low, it’s only measurable among the few marketers who have tried them.

Benchmarking Social Marketing Efforts In China gives guidance on what marketers should do with these four groups of social platforms and tactics. It also analyzes the main challenges that social marketers are facing in China and tells them how to plan and evaluate their social marketing strategies better. I hope you enjoy it, and I welcome your feedback.