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.
One key factor that could be preventing measurement success is the proper usage of social media technology. Social media professionals polled by Simply Measured and TrustRadius used an average of three social media tools to report on and analyze such efforts. Analytics native to social networks were the most commonly used tools, cited by 65% of respondents. Social media management platforms followed, at 62%, while web analytics solutions rounded out the top three.
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.
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