Commentary

Social Media Creates Brand Awareness For Marketers

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

Twitter

93%

LinkedIn

91%

Facebook

68%

YouTube

57%

Google+

23%

Vimeo

9%

Pinterest

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.

For additional information from Regalix, please visit here.

 

2 comments about "Social Media Creates Brand Awareness For Marketers".
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  1. Neil Mahoney from Mahoney/Marketing, July 22, 2015 at 1:57 p.m.

    What surprises me is the high percentage of B2B companies that rely on Twitter for building Brand Awareness.  If Awareness is the sole criterion, I can understand the use of Twitter, but if these same companes care anything about Brand Preference, they should beware.  Neil Mahoney

  2. George Linley from Axon Garside, July 23, 2015 at 11:04 a.m.

    Great insight! It's true what you say, social media is an amazing tool for creating brand awareness, yet few businesses realise its potential, or use the marketing platform to its full potential. However, creating an effective social media strategy in reality can be tricky. From finding the time to actually create social content, to creating and implementing the right brand voice – it’s easier said than done! I've found this guide for creating a social media strategy really handy if anyone is looking for some additional reading: http://bit.ly/1fa2ZR

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