Social media marketing requires that marketing budgets change because money isn't the most important item in the marketing department budget. Time is. As marketing shifts toward more social mediums, time will be the most cherished and protected item in the marketing departments across the country.
The recession has spurred numerous reports about how marketing departments are cutting back their budgets. What nobody seems to be talking about, however, is marketing departments cutting back on the amount of time their employees spend doing things they don't need to be doing. Today, the marketers in many corporate marketing departments are mostly project coordinators. Most of these professionals have both the knowledge and tools they need (or could get them very quickly) to be a great social media marketer, but their time is filled with all the projects they've outsourced. Their role is more like an air traffic controller than a professional marketer.
With social media marketing, many of the outsourced projects of today simply won't exist in the future. They won't need to. It's not about getting to as many people as possible anymore. It's about getting to the right people. This means that some percentage (and in many cases a large percentage) of marketing employee time will be free to pursue conversations with and create content for the right people. And that's the promise of social media marketing.
Outsourced marketing will be replaced my insourced marketing. It only requires you stop doing the things that probably aren't working anyway.