Report: Marketers Continue to Struggle to Measure Social Media ROI

New research suggests that marketers are continuing to utilize social media as a tactic, but they remain unsure of how to measure its overall effectiveness.

Buffer recently published its “State of Social” report, which found that the overwhelming majority of marketers (58.8 percent) claim that social media is “very important” to their overall marketing strategy. However, 19.1 percent of marketers are “uncertain” of how effective social media marketing as been for their business.

The majority of respondents (50.9 percent) claimed that they do not have a documented social media strategy. When it comes to gauging effectiveness, most marketers (66.4 percent) said they rely on likes/shares/comments. About 59.5 percent look at interaction with their brand, while 50.8 percent weigh discussion.

In terms of measuring the ROI of social media advertising, 60.3 percent of marketers say they look at engagement. Fifty-one percent assess traffic, while 48 percent gauge leads.

Social Media Marketing and Its Overall Effectiveness

Despite the challenges still associated with social media marketing, marketers do not appear to be slowing down in their investment in this tactic, according to previous research.

Social Media Today published its “Social Spending Survey” to gauge how marketers are investing in social media channels ranging from Instagram to Facebook. Overall, 68 percent of marketers intend to spend more on social media ads in 2019, suggesting that the tactic is yielding some benefit.

Currently, most of marketers’ social media budget (nearly 60 percent) goes toward content creation, followed by advertising (approximately 20 percent), staff (about 20 percent) and management and reporting tools (less than 10 percent).