Despite a lack of confidence in the overall US economy, CMOs are planning to increase spending on all forms of marketing over the next 12 months, particularly the share of budget allocated to social media marketing, according to The CMO Survey.

In addition, surveyed CMOs now report their companies are planning to increase spending on marketing hires 7.2% on average over the next 12 months.

"These results show that while executives feel the fear of all the doomsayers operating in financial markets, these same executives are reporting positive performance gains and are spending despite the negative news," said Christine Moorman, T Austin Finch senior professor of Business Administration at Duke's Fuqua School of Business and the director of The CMO Survey.

"It is important to note that the company performance indicators collected in the survey show companies are holding on to their profit, revenue, and ROI gains witnessed over the last six months."

Below, additional findings from the August 2011 CMO Survey, a nationwide poll of senior marketing executives conducted biannually by The American Marketing Association and Duke University's Fuqua School of Business.

Social Media Spending

Among surveyed CMOs, social media spending is expected to account for 10.1% of marketing budgets over the next 12 months, up from 7.1% in August 2011.

Moreover, in the next five years, social spending is projected to climb to 17.5% of total marketing budgets.

B2C brands that sell products and B2B brands selling services are expected to invest the biggest share of their budgets to social media over the next five years:

• B2C products companies are expected to more the double their investments in social spending, from 10.5% in August 2011, to 24% in the next five years. 
• B2B services companies are increasing spending on social media to 18.3% in the next five years, from 8.6% in August 2011.

Integration of Social Media Into the Strategy

Marketers still struggle to ingrate social media into their overall approach.

On a scale of 1-7, with one being "not integrated at all" and seven being "very integrated," nearly one-quarter of CMOs (22.3%) selected "1" to describe how well their company integrates social media with the firm's overall strategy, whereas 9.1 rated their efforts a "7", or very integrated. The average was 3.4.

Results were slightly better for integration within the marketing strategy: 16.9% of CMOs selected "1" for this question, while 12.8% selected "7" for the marketing strategy (the average was 4.0).