With most companies focusing their social media marketing efforts on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, over one-third (36.1%) say they've been able to make a conversion from initial connection to sale via such social channels, according to a new survey from R2integrated.
Another 25.3% of marketers surveyed who conduct social media marketing say they are getting close to making a sale via social media and 38.1% say they haven't done so at all.
Below, other findings from The Social Media Marketing Survey by R2integrated, based on a survey of 296 marketing professionals who use social media for marketing.
More than four in five marketers (83%) report using all of the top 3 social networking sites—Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn—for marketing.
Asked which social media site is their No. 1 focus, marketers cite the following:
- Facebook: 45.9%
- Twitter: 20.6%
- LinkedIn: 19.6%
Only 3% of marketers say their No. 1 focus is YouTube.
How Companies Are Using Social Media
Some 43.9% of marketers say they have a defined social media strategy, with most marketers (31.1%) using social media for content publishing and lead generation/business development (27.0%).
Over one in ten marketers (12.2%) are using social media for customer relations and 10.8% are using it to monitor their brands.
Measuring Social Media
Most are measuring the success of social media by tracking website traffic from social media links (27.7%) and brand-related conversations (24.7%).
Another 20.9% of marketers count fans and followers, and 18.9% track leads.
Lack of Time, Resource Issues Hinder Social Media Marketing
Asked to rank select the single biggest mistake they've made with social media, most marketers (37.8%) cite insufficient time and resources.
However, over one-half of marketers cite the lack of a game plan: 29.7% cite no social media strategy and 22.3% cite unclear goals and objectives.
Looking ahead to 2011, 44.6% of marketers cite time and resources as their greatest anticipated challenge in 2011, followed by demonstrating ROI (33.1%).
Some 12.8% of marketers cite differentiating themselves from their competition as their greatest challenge with social media marketing in the coming year.
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Social Media Budgets in 2011
Over six in ten marketers (61.8%) say they'll allocate up to 20% of their 2011 marketing budgets to social media activities and fully one-quarter (25.7%) intend to allocate 20-40% of their annual budgets to social channels.
Only 8.4% of marketers plan to allocate 40-60% of their budgets to social media.
Overall, marketers intend to focus on websites (35%) and search (20%) as their two main marketing channels.
About the data: Findings are based on a survey of 296 marketing professionals who conduct social media marketing for their companies, November 5-19, 2010.
