• With social search surging, more than half of marketing leaders plan to hire social media search specialists in the next year, ranking it their top recruitment priority

• New platforms, shifting consumer habits, and emerging technologies are driving marketing leaders to move budgets from other channels to social, where the entire customer journey now unfolds

• Despite ramping up investment in social, only 44% of marketing leaders consider their teams “expert” at measuring social’s business impact

New research from Sprout Social, an industry-leading provider of cloud-based social media management software, reveals that marketing leaders are significantly shifting their budget priorities this year, reallocating funds from traditional channels to social media. The 2025 Impact of Social Media Report, which surveyed 1,200 marketing leaders worldwide, finds that leaders believe social media drives key outcomes like revenue, customer acquisition, and customer loyalty. As budgets shift and social’s strategic importance grows, the report outlines how a focus on business-driven metrics and cross-functional data integration will be critical to securing executive trust and investment in the era of social intelligence.

Social media is now seen as a primary driver of business value, shaping every stage of the customer journey. Marketing leaders credit it with delivering key outcomes such as customer acquisition (60%), customer loyalty (58%), and revenue (56%). As a result, 80% of marketing leaders globally plan to reallocate funds from other channels to social media. In addition, 87% plan to increase their paid social spend, and over 80% will increase their spend in influencer marketing and organic social. The investment extends to talent, with three-quarters of leaders planning to expand the headcount of their social teams in the next year.

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This increased investment is increasing the demands from leadership, too, particularly the need to effectively measure and prove social’s ROI. However, a significant gap exists in their confidence in social media overall and their team’s ability to tie social to broader business outcomes. Less than half (44%) of leaders rate their social team at the “expert” level in measuring business impact, which is often blamed on a lack of sophisticated reporting. The research indicates that most social teams measure success by engagement (68%) and conversion rates (65%), while leaders say that “expert” teams are more likely to use revenue and efficiency metrics to measure ROI.

“Social media is rapidly capturing a larger share of marketing budgets, driven by its unmatched ability to deliver results that other channels struggle to achieve,” said Scott Morris, CMO of Sprout Social. “With the rise of social search, increasing influence of creator-driven marketing, and effectiveness of advanced algorithms, social platforms empower brands to connect with audiences on a personal level while gaining real-time insights into customer behavior and campaign performance. As social media delivers stronger ROI and attracts greater investment, enhancing data literacy will be critical so brands can harness social insights for transformative impact across their organization.”

The report also reveals how CMOs are pivoting hiring priorities to match evolving consumer behaviors, particularly Gen Z’s preference for social media as the first stop for search. Marketing leaders are quickly seizing this opportunity, with 81% reallocating funds from traditional SEO to social tactics. More than half of brands already have a social media search engine optimization (SOSEO) strategy in place, with another 43% actively experimenting. Reflecting this shift, SOSEO specialists are now the #1 position marketing leaders are hiring for, underscoring the rapid impact of social search on business strategy.

Additional findings from the 2025 Impact of Social Media Report include:

• Platform Impact: The top social media platforms for business impact are Facebook (70%), YouTube (68%), and TikTok (64%). However, the most effective platform varies by audience: B2B brands find LinkedIn (70%) most impactful, while B2C brands prefer Facebook (67%).
• Data and Strategy: The majority (72%) of leaders whose teams are experts at measuring social media’s impact say their teams are also experts at understanding how to drive more business impact, underscoring the more data teams have, the more strategic they become.
• Quality vs. Quantity: A disconnect exists between leaders and social media managers regarding content volume. While 69% of CMOs think more posts will increase impact, only 50% of managers agree. Data from Sprout’s 2025 Content Benchmarks Report supports the managers’ view, showing that engagement rose nearly 20% even as publishing volume dropped over the past year.
• Cross-Functional Insights: Marketing leaders want social media insights to be used across multiple departments, including digital marketing (71%), customer experience (58%), customer care (49%), and business development (49%). Yet, less than half of teams integrate social data into their customer relationship management (CRM) software.

“Even just two years ago, most brands focused on vanity metrics in isolation. Today, Canva social reporting is much more sophisticated and complex. We are integrating social data into the larger marketing mix by analyzing community conversations on social to learn more about what our audience needs from our product,” said Shirley Tat, Global Head of Social, Canva. “By tracking all of these conversations, we’re able to tag thousands of incoming messages, and eventually close the loop with our community and show them we listened. We launched all of our new products this year based on user feedback. We’ve come a long way in thinking about how social media shifts the business forward.”

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