The advent of active social media in the marketing mix has added complexity to the already challenging task of determining the right combination of efforts to give the maximum impact for your company. Most businesses have not yet found this balance.
We recently reviewed a study by Omniture which surveyed how marketers are striving to get the most impact for their social media investment.
Most have not yet adopted emerging channels: Only 14% say they now use mobile, social media, and video channels in their marketing mix
Nearly seven in ten surveyed marketers (69%) say they use social media, 43% use video in their marketing, and 23% use mobile.
Looking ahead, 75% of marketers plan to increase investment in emerging channels in the next three years. However, marketers’ inability to measure the success of emerging marketing channels remains a key hurdle.
Below, other findings of the 2010 Omniture Online Analytics Benchmark Survey.
Social Media Marketing
Among marketers who use social media, the following social marketing activities are among the most widely adopted:
• Social networking and gaming sites: 92%
• Blogs and microblogs: 83%
• Multimedia sharing: 57%
• Bookmarking and news sites: 29%
• Social knowledge: 23%
• Ratings and review sites: 14%
Most marketers (63%) say Facebook is the most important social site for their business, while 28% cite Twitter and 23% cite Youtube.
Measuring the business impact of social media continues to challenge marketers: Just 22% say they are very satisfied with their ability to measure social media marketing, while 27% say they are somewhat satisfied and 45% say they are neutral.
Marketers cite conversion (74%) and the number of referrals (70%) as the top 2 metrics that would give them the most actionable insight into social media campaigns, followed by revenue (62%), brand monitoring (61%), visits per visitor (47%), and competitor brand monitoring (47%).
However, 41% of marketers say they lack a mechanism to measure social media conversion and 34% cannot measure referrals.
Mobile Marketing
Among the 23% of marketers who use mobile in their marketing mix:
• 63% offer a mobile version of their website.
• 60% use short message service (SMS) text marketing.
• 52% have created mobile applications.
Nearly three-quarters (73%) of marketers who use mobile say they measure visitors coming to their site on a mobile device and 66% measure mobile pages viewed and clicks on a mobile device.
However, just 30% are able to measure mobile app conversions—and, overall, only 23% say they are very satisfied with their current mobile measurement capabilities.
Video Marketing
Less than one-half of marketers (43%) are using online video in their marketing mix.
Just 22% of marketers say they are very satisfied with their ability to measure video marketing, 19% say they are somewhat satisfied, and 51% say they are neutral.
Among the most important video marketing metrics cited by mobile marketers are the following:
• Post-video conversion: 67%
• Referral numbers: 67%
• Video ratings: 59%
• Viral embeds on nonvideo sharing sites: 55%
• Video starts: 50%
However, only 21% of marketers say they measure post-video conversion and 33% measure the number of referrals from a video. Some 53% measure video starts, while just 29% measure viral placements on video sharing sites.
Lack of Effective ROI Measurement
Although 53% of marketers say measuring online marketing ROI is important and 27% say it’s somewhat important, 55% say they cannot effectively measure marketing ROI.
Two-thirds (65%) of marketers say measuring conversion rate is important and 21% say somewhat important, but 25% cannot effectively measure it.
Asked to rank the top challenges marketers face in taking action from analytics data, marketed cited their inability to…
• Leverage analytics data to create personalized site experiences: 50%
• Optimize across channels and marketing systems: 48%
• Identify best-performing acquisition tactics to maximize return on ad spend: 46%
• Identify visitor profiles for segmentation and targeted relevant marketing: 37%
• Identify Web, video, and social media channels to optimize visitor experience: 35%
Attribution Still a Mystery
Roughly one-half of marketers say they understand how visitors are interacting with their site. However, there is room for improvement:
• 43% cannot allocate revenue to their marketing campaigns, making it difficult to understand ROI.
• 75% cannot do a full funnel analysis.
• 39% can tell if someone is a repeat visitor through database remarketing.
About the data: Findings are from the 2010 Online Analytics Benchmark Survey among marketing professionals conducted through May 7, 2010 by Omniture, an Adobe Systems company.
