A new study by BtoB finds that almost 1/2 of firms “are “very involved” or “fully integrated” with social marketing, up from 28% last year, and fully 96% of all marketers are engaging with social media in some fashion.” Read the original post at Social Media Marketing Reaches Maturity. {Editor’s Note] Social media marketing is playing a larger and larger role in Digital Marketing programs today.
Social also makes up 6% of the average marketing budget, but 9% in best in class companies.
However, social is still hard to measure. Only 41% of marketers even attempt to measure the results of social. ”
“Marketers rated social’s performance as a marketing tool at 6.4 on a 10-point scale, where 10 represents complete satisfaction with ROI.
“We know companies largely are unable to measure the success of their social media marketing programs,” said Jeremiah Owyang, industry analyst at consultancy Altimeter Group. “That’s been the top marketing challenge for the past three years.”
LinkedIn is the channel most used by b2b marketers, according to BtoB’s study, with 80% engaged in the professional profile site. Facebook (75%) and Twitter (74%) are almost as commonly used, with YouTube (59%), blogging (48%), Google+ (32%), customer communities (24%), Pinterest (19%) and LinkedIn’s SlideShare (13%) also represented.
A starker divide is seen when marketers were asked which of these, among others, is their most important social platform or tool. Here, LinkedIn (34%) bested Facebook (19%) by far, with blogging (17%), Twitter (12%), customer communities (10%) and YouTube (5%) following.
[Editor’s note: Facebook is way too high and blogging is way too low. Twitter is too low too.)
Companies are finding the social is ideal for company branding efforts, Other goals being positively affected by social media marketing include, in order, product/event production, community building and website traffic boosting. Respondents said an average of 11% of website traffic is being driven by their social marketing efforts.
BtoB’s study was based on an online poll conducted in January and February of 432 b2b marketers. The sample of respondents was largely from small-to-midsize businesses: 62% of respondents represented companies with less than $100 million in annual revenue. At the other end of the scale, 20% of respondents represented companies with more than $1 billion in annual sales.
Technology companies comprised 30% of the sample. Manufacturing (11%), financial services (9%), consulting (9%), publishing/media (4%) and wholesale trade/distribution (4%) also were represented.
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