![Top Challenges With Social Media Marketing By Company Size, March 2015 [TABLE]](https://trends.e-strategyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/190714.gif "Table - Top Challenges With Social Media Marketing By Company Size")
Nearly nine in 10 US companies with 100-plus employees will use social media for marketing purposes this year, eMarketer estimates. However, marketers still struggle to measure the value of such efforts, based on a March 2015 study by Simply Measured and TrustRadius.
Social media professionals in North America from companies of all sizes were most likely to cite measuring return on investment (ROI) as one of the most challenging aspects of their social media programs. Tying social activities to business outcomes was also cited by around half of respondents from each group, putting it as the second-biggest challenge for midsize and enterprise companies and the third biggest for small firms.
Other research finds similar results. In a December 2014 study from SharpSpring, 40% of ad agency professionals worldwide cited the inability to measure ROI as a leading obstacle to achieving social media marketing success, and in other December 2014 research from Ascend2, 42% of marketing professionals worldwide said the same. In addition, among client-side marketers polled worldwide in January 2015 by Econsultancy, just 20% said their ability to measure social media investment (for engagement and retention) was “good.” The remaining 80% of responses were evenly split between “OK” and “poor.” Read the rest at eMarketer.
The e-Strategy Academy covers all aspects of digital marketing including search optimization & marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, video marketing, mobile marketing & public relations.