With virtually every large company — and many mid-sized and small firms — now involved with social media in some question, one of the big challenges that remains is: How can we measure the effectiveness of social media? Yes, we can rather easily track the number of likes we get and generate reports on comments at social media sites. But how can we measure return on investment (ROI)?
To help address the effectiveness of social media, Duke’s Fuqua School of Business recently conducted a study of chief marketing officers (CMOs) at a number of companies.
“Social media ad spending continues to grow in the U.S., with eMarketer forecasting the format will make up more than 20% of digital ad spending by 2017. Yet even as marketers’ social media budgets increase, many are still struggling to make sense of its overall impact on their business.”
“Based on an August survey of U.S.-based CMOs by Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, executives from across the business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) sectors are still figuring out how to gauge the true effect of social media on their business. The problem is more pronounced for those in the B2B sector, where nearly half of respondents haven’t yet been able to show the impact of social media. Many in the B2C sector have had better luck showing the qualitative impact of social, although 60% or more of CMOs still they did not know the channel’s quantitative impact.
Take a look at the two charts on the Duke study from eMarketer. See what CMOs say their companies are doing to assess social media effectiveness.
