Social media is, of course, all the rage these days. After all, “everyone’s doing it so why shouldn’t I?” is what most marketing directors think. So they dive in, created a Facebook page, open a Twitter account, start a blog and maybe even field a few questions on Quora. But then they sort of walk away. Well, 30 percent of them do according to a recent study from cloud computing company Pardot.
The study found 30 percent of B2B marketers don’t track the impact of their social media programs though 95 percent of all those surveyed claim to use the usual social media tools including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs and YouTube.
One could argue the fact that the 70 percent of B2B marketers who do monitor their social media campaigns is a very good thing. Sadly, of the 70 percent who decided paying attention to their social media ROI, 42 percent said their social media efforts garnered “zero or an uncertain number” of sales leads.
Additional study findings include:
– Approximately 11% of marketers said their companies have a formal social media policy
– 55% of respondents said contacting a social media-generated sales lead by phone or email is appropriate, even if the prospect had not invited the vendor to do so
– Meanwhile, 48% said it is appropriate to respond to a prospect via social media, if the prospect contacted the vendor via email or phone first
– 100% of respondents said it is acceptable to invite a prospect to join a marketer’s online social networks, though some suggested the invites be limited to networks such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora, Plaxo and YouTube, versus more personal sites like Facebook
– 31% said it is acceptable to critique a competitor via social media
Importantly, the study also found 64 percent of respondents said they used internal or free tools to monitor their social media success and posits that may have bearing on the ability to properly track a social media campaign. Nine percent of B2B marketers rely on an outside firm to handle their social media campaigns.
