Marketing in social networks has ceased to be a support area to become the central axis of the digital strategy. This follows from the “2025 Impact of Social Marketing” report, prepared by Social Sprout from the responses of 1,200 marketing leaders in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. According to the data, 80% of these professionals claim that they plan to reallocate part of their budget from other channels to social networks, in recognition of their decisive weight in the customer’s route and in the generation of business value.

The figures reinforce that trend: 87% will increase their investment in Social Media Paid, while more than 80% will do so in influencers marketing and in social organic. This strategy also includes the expansion of the teams: 75% of the companies plan to hire more personnel in this area, being the specialists in social media search optimization (SOSEO) the most demanded profile today.

Between engagement and investment return: an operational gap

Although marketing responsible identify clearly the results obtained in terms of client acquisition (60%), loyalty (58%) and income (56%), less than half of them (44%) consider that their equipment has the expert level necessary to properly measure the impact of the channel in terms of investment return (ROI). This lack is largely attributed to a lack of sophistication in reporting and analysis systems.

In practice, most teams continue to use interaction rates (68%) and conversion as main indicators (65%), while only the equipment considered most advanced by their leaders incorporate efficiency metrics or data directly linked to the Revenue. This lag shows a structural challenge: the growing weight of social networks in budgets is not necessarily accompanied by an equivalent maturity in the analysis and measurement capabilities.

The new SEO is social

The evolution in search habits, especially among generation Z, has turned social networks into a priority starting point to discover products and brands, above traditional search engines. The report reflects this transition: 81% of leaders claim to have transferred part of their investment from the traditional SEO to social tactics, and more than half already have a formal Search social strategy. The remaining 43% is in the test or development phase.

Facebook (70%), YouTube (68%) and Tiktok (64%) are placed as platforms with the greatest impact for the business in general, although the report clarifies that the effectiveness depends on the type of audience: LinkedIn is more effective for B2B (70%), while Facebook dominates in the B2C (67%).

Volume, quality and transverse strategy

One of the dissent points between CMOS and Social Media Managers is the relationship between number of publications and impact. While 69% of leaders believe that more publications generate better results, only 50% of operational responsible coincide with that statement. In fact, social sproup data indicate that, despite a drop in the volume of publications during the last year, engagement increased by 20%.

The integration of social data in other business areas is another pending challenge. Although leaders want these insights to be shared with departments such as digital marketing (71%), customer experience (58%), customer service (49%) or business development (49%), less than half of the equipment manage to incorporate this information into their CRM systems or interdepartmental flows.

A new era of social intelligence

The Social Sprout report concludes that, before an environment increasingly dominated by social platforms, alphabetization into data will be key to transforming these channels into real business levers. “As social networks offer greater ROI and attract more investment, improve alphabetization in data will be essential for brands to take advantage of their insights in a transformative way throughout the organization”Affirms Scott Morris, Chief Marketing Officer in Social Sprout.

The evolution of social marketing requires, therefore, an organizational culture oriented to data, technical capabilities to interpret real -time signals and a strategic vision that understands that the business does not develop in Silos, but that the platforms are emerging as the main axis.