Facebook Leads Digital Marketing Spend for Retailers, Study Finds

Social media marketing is on the rise. According to the annual State of Online Retailing 2016: Marketing and Merchandising report conducted by the National Retail Federation and Forrester, paid search and email marketing top retailers’ lists of effective customer service and acquisition channels. The study, released at Shop.org's Retail's Digital Summit, found that 92 percent of retailers are investing in social media marketing to some degree, second only to email (94 percent). Sixty-four percent of retailers surveyed said they're seeing increased conversion specifically from their paid Facebook efforts. Only 40 percent claimed they saw an increase from paid Instagram efforts.

Total Retail's Take: It seems retailers go back and forth on the value of social media marketing, especially with all the new platforms available. However, it's hard to deny that after all of these years, Facebook still has some of the top conversion rates of any platform. And after acquiring Instagram, Facebook's marketing potential is unmatched by other platforms — at least for the time being. Specifically, Facebook has invested in technologies to help marketers, including webinars, Facebook Live video streaming and more.