By nickjohnson - October 16th, 2013
According to a somewhat disconcerting report from TATA, only 38% of companies are finding that social drives positive ROI.
And yet, according to another study (full disclosure: I wrote it), 93% of companies say social is becoming an increasingly important part of their marketing strategy, and 40% are confident it’s driving sales.
It’s only when one reads a little more deeply into the TATA (to page 12, to be exact) that it becomes clear the picture is rather more rosy than it first appears.
First, that 38% represents more than double the amount of people that report a negative ROI. The issue is that an enormous 44% of companies just haven’t bothered to measure ROI yet.
Other findings from the briefing (available here):
- If lots of departments are involved in social, you’ll get more out of it
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The best ‘social’ companies do more than just create Facebook pages - they blog, do video etc too
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Using social requires corporate transparency
While the findings themselves will not come as a surprise to anyone who has worked in marketing for more than a few seconds, the detail is useful, and the benchmarks the company have provided could certainly be put to work in tracking your own progress.