Dive Brief:
- A study from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business found that over 60% of B2C CMOs do not know the quantitative impact of social media, although many suggested they had a better handle on the qualitative benefits of the channel, according to eMarketer.
- Social appears more difficult for B2B, with nearly 50% of B2B CMOs saying they have not been able to show how social media has affected their business.
- The study found that 33.3% of CMOs surveyed are using analytics to make decisions about social media, a figure that's up from 30.7% last year.
Dive Insight:
Social media is still evolving as a marketing channel — and marketers are struggling to measure the channel's effectiveness. In the early days, brands would take to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to create an organic community and engage with an audience. But Facebook changed the name of the game by pushing marketers toward a pay-to-play advertising model through algorithm changes that hurt brands’ organic reach while making it much easier to reach a targeted audience via advertising.
Duke's CMO Survey shows that B2C and B2B marketers are shaving trouble proving the quantitative value of social media outreach. While marketers are receiving more metrics and measurement of their campaigns from social platforms than in years past, ROI remains the biggest challenge for over 60% of social media marketers, according to Simply Measured. Better measurement and more consistent metrics across different platforms could help marketers quantify the value of their social media campaigns: A survey by WPP’s Millward Brown Digital found that 74% of marketing executives would increase social media budgets with better results metrics and ROI tracking.
