According to a new study from Regalix, social media marketing today is largely used to build awareness and exposure, though 80% of respondents say revenue generated from social media marketing is less than 10%. However, the budget for social media marketing appears to be allocated more generously, with 28% of respondents claiming their social media spend to be between 10% and 25%.
The study spoke to senior B2B marketers to understand current trends in social media marketing and the challenges faced by them in implementing a social media strategy. The research was done globally with a fair mix of product and service companies.Key findings of B2B mobile marketing 2015 are:
- 94% respondents choose increasing brand awareness as key objective of their social media marketing efforts
- 93% marketers choose Twitter as the most used social media platform
- 88 % respondents say they have integrated their social media marketing with their overall marketing program
- 82% respondents say their organizations invest in social media marketing
- 52% respondents say they expect their social media budget to go up in the next 12 months
While marketers chose increasing brand awareness as the key objective of their social media marketing efforts, it was followed followed by lead generation at 69% and constant engagement at 67%.
Given the power of social media to engage with customers, it is surprising to find brand awareness overwhelmingly top the list of key objectives, says the report. Perhaps, opines the report, a reflection of the fact that most organizations still largely use social media as a broadcast or advertising medium, and not as much for meaningfully engaging with customers.
| Key Objectives of Social Media Marketing | |
| Objective |
% of Respondents |
| Increase brand awareness |
94% |
| Lead generation |
69% |
| Constant engagement |
67% |
| Delivering updates about company/product |
59% |
| Promote products and offers |
56% |
| Increase customer acquisition |
49% |
| Increase customer loyalty |
47% |
| Advocate our initiatives |
39% |
| Increase customer support |
23% |
| Source: Regalix Research July 2015 | |
Twitter and LinkedIn were the most used social platforms. The lower rating given to Facebook is understandable in a B2B environment, says the report.
Given the rising importance of video as content, the report anticipates that YouTube will gain in significance in the coming years.
| Social Platforms Majorly Used For Marketing In Respondent Organization | |
| Platform |
% of Respondents |
|
93% |
|
|
91% |
|
|
68% |
|
| YouTube |
57% |
| Google+ |
23% |
| Vimeo |
9% |
|
7% |
|
| Source: Regalix Research July 2015 | |
79% of the respondents chose blogging/micro blogging as a tactic used to meet their social media marketing objective.
| Social Media Marketing Tactics Currently Used To Achieve Objectives | |
| Tactic |
% of Respondents |
| Blogging / Microblogging |
79% |
| Website design / Management / Optimization |
74% |
| Content sharing |
74% |
| Webinar |
68% |
| Social media advertising |
66% |
| Social sharing button |
57% |
| SEO for social sites |
43% |
| Social media contents |
41% |
| Social media news release |
40% |
| Social media contest |
18% |
| Interactive posts |
16% |
| Social media apps |
13% |
| Social bookmarking |
4% |
| Source: Regalix Research July 2015 | |
A majority of B2B marketers from around the world say that generating actionable insights from social data is a key social marketing challenge faced by their organization, according to the report. This is the second-leading social media challenge, behind only the ever-present questions about its effectiveness, says the report.
The fact that far only 23% of respondents complained of a lack of tools and techniques to gather relevant social data suggests that issues with data aren’t related to collection but rather the extraction of meaningful insights.
| B2B Social Media Marketing Challenges (July 2015) | |
| Challenge |
% of Respondents |
| Assessing the effectiveness of social marketing activities |
57% |
| Generating actionable insights from social data 53 | |
| Aligning social media strategies throughout different departments within the company |
45 |
| Designing social media strategy |
43 |
| Creating a Buy-In among company execs about importance of social marketing |
39 |
| Lack of qualified prospects/leads |
31 |
| Nor or little standard benchmarks due to rappid increase in number of social channels |
27 |
| Creating customer focused content |
27 |
| Lack of tools and techniques to gather relevant social data |
23 |
| Channels and changes in technologies |
18 |
| Privacy rules, regulations and security compliance policies |
14 |
| Source: Regalix Research July 2015 | |
Re-tweets/share was cited as the most commonly used measure of success in social media marketing, followed by fans/followers/likes.
| Metrics Commonly Used To Measure The Success Of Social Media Marketing | |
| Success Measure |
% of Respondents |
| Re-tweets / share |
78% |
| Fans / followers / likes |
66% |
| Comments |
56% |
| Share of conversion against other channels |
36% |
| Referrals |
30% |
| Source: Regalix Research July 2015 | |
Assessing the effectiveness of social media marketing & measuring ROI is still a challenge, concludes the report. 71% of organizations said they were either not able to measure the ROI of their social media campaigns or were not sure how to. Only 29% said they were able to measure it.
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