According to the survey, marketers admit to struggling with customer engagement on multiple channels. This makes sense as many marketers are just beginning to experiment with more engagement efforts, one channel at a time.

In the near future, we’ll begin to see this single channel engagement morph into a more synergistic engagement effort over multiple channels. As we’ve seen with other social media trends, these shifts take time.

Here are some of the findings:

• Customization: The vast majority of respondents have created a customized experience for their social channels. (Only 9% admitted to not customizing any of their channels.)
• IT vs. Marketing: 66% of respondents admitted to having friction between their IT and marketing departments.
• Social Conversations: A vast majority of marketers (7 out of 10) say they have little understanding of social media conversations surrounding their brand.

In addition to delivering these insightful statistics, Alterian also created the above infographic to give a snapshot of the most important stats.

Click here to read the full report and download the infographic.

Alterian asked marketing professionals a series of engagement questions. Let’s take a look and see where you stand in relation to others in your industry.

#1: How will marketing budgets change over next year?

About half of the marketers surveyed claim their budget will increase slightly, while about 9% see their budgets greatly increasing.

In addition, about a quarter of those surveyed plan to maintain the same investment, roughly 10% will decrease their budgets and a little over 7% say they have not yet determined next year’s budget.

#2: How will social media budgets change over next year?

About half of the marketers surveyed expect their social/digital marketing expenditures will increase slightly while 23% see their expenditures greatly increasing.

Also, 14% of the marketers plan to maintain the same investment while 4% will spend less than the year before.

#3: Do you monitor social media conversations?

Almost 40% of those surveyed said they are using a few ad-hoc tools and 30% said they are reporting regularly to management.

In addition, almost 30% claim they have very little understanding of the social media conversations happening around their brand or those of their clients.

#4: Are you as engaged with customers as you should be?

A little over half of those surveyed (57%) feel their brand (or client’s brand) is somewhat at risk and are taking action to fix the challenge.

13% said they know they need to better engage but haven’t taken action and 7% admitted there were major concerns, but didn’t know where to start to fix the issues.

Lastly, about a quarter of the marketers claimed their brand (or those of their clients) was not at risk and they were fully engaged with their customers.

Now it’s your turn! Did any of these statistics surprise you? What changes have you made to engage with your customers? Share your thoughts in the comments box below.

Here are two current studies that show how the integration of social media marketing is changing the way marketers connect and engage with their audiences—online and offline.

#1:  Marketers Ditch Silo Campaigns and Report Social Media as “Critical for Success” (Alterian)

As digital and social media marketing mature, the demand for greater integration is evident. Marketers are quickly realizing that operating in a one-way marketing tunnel makes success impossible in this social media–saturated world.

Listening first and then communicating and engaging have become “musts” for any successful social media campaign. Results of a 2009 survey by Alterian indicate that social media is becoming an integral part of most companies’ marketing campaigns:

• 50%+ direct at least “a fair amount” of effort toward integrating social media marketing into their overall strategy
• 66% will be investing in social media marketing in 2010
• 40% of the 66% plan to shift more than a fifth of their traditional direct marketing budget toward funding their social media marketing activities

eMarketer’s report on the findings of the Alterian study pointed out, “[Social Media] is yet another channel to be incorporated into an integrated communication strategy, rather than addressed on its own. And it can provide unique insights into the consumers who can now use earned media to build brands alongside marketers.”

As with earlier reports in 2009, marketers still feel a need for education and training with social media, as more than one-third reported only being “minimally prepared.”  The good news is 37% planned to invest in training in this area.  In addition to training, the survey also found that 36% are investing in social media monitoring and analysis tools.

It will be interesting to see how marketers begin to use not only Facebook and Twitter to reach their audiences, but also start to take even greater advantage of podcasting, message boards, forums, video sharing and the many other social media tools consumers are using today.

#2:  Online Forum Users Transcend Online and Offline Worlds, Becoming Influential Brand Advocates (Synovate/PostRelease)

Word-of-mouth has always been vital in building loyal customers. Friends—whether online or offline—and family are trusted sources when making purchasing decisions. As mentioned in my previous article, a recent study from PostRelease showed how online forum users are enthusiastic brand advocates and are taking their online activities to the streets, telling others about products and services they recommend. Not only are they recommending brands to their family and friends, they are also more likely to publish blogs and organize meet-ups, compared to non-forum users.

The PostRelease study focuses on consumer’s organization offline. Consumers are merging their online and offline influences, and this could be a huge opportunity for any savvy marketer who sees these new possibilities.

Marketers are becoming acutely aware of the need to integrate new media activities into their existing marketing plans and consumers are demanding greater social media engagement from the brands they follow most.  This could be a win-win situation if carried out strategically.

Now it’s your turn.  How have you seen the growing integration of social media marketing change your company’s marketing strategy? As social media matures, what are some ways you see this integration taking shape? We want to hear from you, so start talking!