The social media marketing subsector is a hot bed of activity at the moment, with the level of activity underlining just how seriously software suppliers are taking the business use of social media – and how much they are prepared to pay to gain a slice of the market.
Last week Oracle snapped up Vitrue (see here) for a reputed $300m, this week the word is that Salesforce.com is on the cusp of purchasing Buddy Media (a youngster founded in 2007, who has raised c$90m in VC funding) for an eyebrow-raising $800m. A behind the scenes skirmish may have driven the price up – rumours suggest Buddy Media chose Salesforce.com over Google. Larry Ellison says Oracle looked at Buddy Media but chose Vitrue.
Like Vitrue, Buddy Media’s social marketing platform allows businesses to manage their presence, and run and analyse marketing campaigns and on social sites like Facebook and Twitter. It would certainly complement Salesforce.com’s existing social message and products. The social aspect overlays virtually everything Salesforce.com is doing at the moment as it builds around the concept of the social enterprise.
The wider picture is that of the evolution of plain old CRM into social CRM and the need by businesses to be able to quantify the value of their presence on social sites. By hooking social media channel activities into mainstream CRM processes, sales and service, businesses can start to monetize social media channels. Ultimately, it’s about customer management, leads and revenue - that is what is driving the flurry of activity in social media marketing tools. SAP and Microsoft cannot afford to fall behind so we would not be surprised to hear of social media marketing activity before too long especially as it is not just the mainstream CRM players who are engaged - Adobe closed its acquisition of Efficient Frontier in January (see here), a move that added to its growing digital marketing business.