Social media analytics providers are offering increasingly sophisticated tracking tools, dashboard systems, and market research report products. I’ve taken several months to familiarize myself with the types and levels of products and services that are out there, and there are more almost every day. However, as I continue to develop proposals and work with marketing / public relations clients, I continue to come across a basic problem - most potential clients that would be interested in these types of analytical products simply are too geographically focused or too small for them to be appropriate.
Companies like Biz360 and Buzzmetrics offer very sexy and sophisticated dashboards - but the list of companies that can afford a $60-$100K annual subscription is relatively limited. According to a 2006 survey by PRSA, the average budget for PR-related products and services was reported was $45,800:
- $32,700 for organizations with 50 or fewer employees
- $44,900 for organizations with 51 – 1,000 employees
- $177,500 for those with more than 1,000 employees
This means that only companies with annual revenue of $100M or more will probably be interested in, and able to pay for, sophisticated social media dashboards. This estimated figure seemed to resonate with a few of the analytics companies I spoke to.
There are now quite a few providers that are going after the “middle market” like Andiamo and Radian6 with relatively inexpensively priced dashhboards (especially by comparison) - but even Andiamo is raising their prices this month, and it seems to me that the average small company’s needs for market intel is still not being addressed. And of course, the “small guy” makes up the “long tail” - possibly very profitable, if the right way to reach, match, and deliver to them can be found.
I find that even when potential clients are large enough to easily afford some of the social media analytics, however, there’s another problem - few companies have a truly ubiquitous brand or retail distribution profile that can take advantage of the pervasiveness of the internet. Most companies and organizations really are focused on particular markets or geographies, and really don’t much care about what is being said about their brand or their marketspace outside of their territory. Sadly, it’s still pretty tough to drill down social media analytics to a particular geography or only in context of particular market sectors. For these organizations, the best social media analytical solutions probably should take advantage of free tools (such as BuzzLogic and Google Alerts) and a lot of common sense filtering.
The “long tail” market is still unadressed by the social media analytics market. There’s probably a large opportunity for whomever can fill that space first.
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