This kind of numbers is encouraging marketers to invest extensively in social network advertising. From $920 million spent in 2007 by the US marketers on social networking sites, the number has hit $1.6 billion in 2008. The same showed an 81%, growth in the world market and has reached $2.2 billion in 2008. The numbers for the subsequent years are further encouraging as e-marketers realized the power of peer recommendations.

More and more numbers of e-marketers who are new to the field, are honing their skills to emerge as expert practitioners of social network marketing. The entire advancement is targeted towards achieving the social marketing objectives and improving the promised return on investment (ROI).

In this pursuit, marketers are seen researching the medium and monitoring audiences to establish realistic objectives before formulating the strategy and implementing tools for accomplishing those objectives. Initially, marketers have approached social network marketing tactically and simply included various social networking and media sites to the marketing mix. Having realized that this was counter-productive, they have now, started working on the same strategically.

Social network marketing is soon reaching the point of maturity with most of the organizations moving into the transition phase from the initial trial period to the strategic phase of the learning and adoption curve.