It will likely come as no surprise that marketers still haven’t figured out social media ROI. Social Media Examiner has released their annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report which is chock full of stats on how marketers are using social media.
Let’s start with ROI since it’s a subject near and dear to my heart.
There was an 11% increase in marketers’ ability to measure ROI
Of the respondents, 37% agreed that they were able to measure the ROI of their social media activities. This was up from 26% in 2013. Fortunately, we are seeing some improvement with an 11% increase year over year, but it simply isn’t enough and it isn’t fast enough.
What’s really interesting is the increase in the impact on sales with this increase in measurement.
50% of marketers see improved sales from social media
As ROI has become more important there is a clear line to measuring sales impact. This number increased from 43% last year, which makes sense with an increase in measurement. There were several correlations to the ability to attribute sales impact.
“More than half of marketers who’ve been using social media for at least 3 years report it has helped them improve sales. More than half who spend 6 or more hours per week find the same results and 74% of those who spend 40+ hours earn new business through their efforts. Conversely, 50% of all marketers taking this survey report social media has not helped them improve sales. This may be because they lack the needed tools to track sales.”
As little as 6 hours on social media per week can result in an increase in leads
The first stage to generating sales is to increase leads. The good news is that it looks like at least 6 hours per week is the magic number to start seeing results. For companies of any size this seems like a palatable number.
“By spending as little as 6 hours per week, 66%+ of marketers see lead generation benefits with social media.”
88% of marketers want to know how to measure the ROI from social media
In 2013 87% of marketers wanted to figure this out. This has been one of the top 5 questions for marketers in this report four years so even while we see the number of marketers who can measure ROI increasing and clear ties to leads and sales, it’s clear there is still a lot of room to expand measurement. The largest area for improvement is likely in getting beyond last touch attribution models.
The good news is that marketers are getting better at measuring social media ROI. I’d really like to see this number improve even faster so we can just check this off and move on to optimization.
The report had other interesting findings beyond social media ROI
83% of marketers say they have integrated social media into traditional marketing up from 79%.
43% of marketers now have a mobile optimized blog up from 28%.
94% of marketers are using Facebook.
Only 43% of marketers feel like their Facebook marketing is working. Most don’t know or feel that Facebook isn’t working.
Facebook is the most important platform for B2C marketers (68%) while LinkedIn is the most important for B2B marketers (33%).
68% of marketers plan to increase their use of blogging. The first time since 2010 that blogging has topped the charts.
85% of marketers have NO plans to use Snapchat. (Thank goodness!)
90% of marketers who use paid social media buy ads on Facebook.
Source: [socialmediaexplorer.com]
