Digital marketers' main income 'will be social software'

13:45 4th February 2010

Digital marketing agencies will need to evolve in order to continue to make money in the future.

That is the opinion of Leon Benjamin, a social media practitioner and interim project manager who has worked with Carphone Warehouse among other companies, who warned that digital marketing professionals would not be able to handle the social media for brands for much longer.

He said: "The main source of revenue for digital agencies will be the social software platforms and services they build for their clients. The current labour-centric revenue model - charging cost plus margin for people - is not sustainable in the long term."

Digital marketers should therefore look at developing their own skills in-house as more companies are likely to begin to handle social media on their own to connect directly with their customers.

A report by 33 Digital said that communication via social media was an undervalued resource that companies could use more often.

However, it also warned that companies needed to be aware of the dangers of attempting to use social media to take advantage of news events, citing the backfiring of Habitat's capitalisation on the Iran elections on Twitter.

The report also predicted that social search will become more popular in 2010 after Google launched it across its platforms in January, potentially opening up another avenue for search engine optimisation.