Social media is already a core part of marketing strategies for many companies and predictions are that its importance for business is only set to grow. However, measuring its effect is a far more challenging task, according to the latest Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing from Econsultancy and Adobe.
The report, which is based on data collected from over 650 UK and US digital marketers from small, medium and large companies, reveals that two in three respondents see social as key for their marketing and business strategies but only 22% believe they are adequately measuring and analysing the data it produces. As many as 70% of those polled share the view that social media should be “more rooted in data”.
Commenting on the report, Econsultancy research director Linus Gregoriadis says that many marketers feel overwhelmed with various data coming from different social tools. They provide data on monitoring, managing and measuring activity and it is hard for marketers to place this data in the context of their business goals.
Results from the survey show that at present only 28% of smaller businesses and 42% of large companies are measuring their performance in the context of already defined social media objectives. Larger businesses are more likely to have developed an effective way to measure revenue coming directly from social media, compared to small and medium-sized businesses.