Forrester Research is putting the final touches on one of its prestigious "Wave" reports for social media marketing, a source familiar with the research tells us.
Forrester's Wave reports rank the top marketing vendors on a variety of factors across numerous different services. There are Forrester Wave rankings for private clouds, business intelligence, adtech, loyalty program services, data management platforms, and so on.
Forrester will name Kenshoo, Marin Software, Optimal (recently acquired by Brand Networks,) SHIFT, Unified, Salesforce (via its Buddy Media unit) and Nanigans as its top providers of social media marketing management, our source says. The ranking is based on the amount of client dollars under management, quality of technology, quality of customer service, and quality and size of clients.
Forrester confirmed the list when contacted by Business Insider. The report is scheduled to be published tomorrow, the company says.
There are more than 300 companies among Facebook's marketing services vendors, or "preferred marketing developers" as they are called. So being named among the Forrester seven is a considerable PR coup.
The report will also go some way to repair Forrester's reputation in the social media marketing business: In October it published a widely panned survey that concluded advertisers should not dedicate a paid ad budget to Facebook.
SEE ALSO: Brutal Forrester Report Tells Advertisers, 'Don’t Dedicate A Paid Ad Budget For Facebook'