We’re living in a cross-channel world, but marketers are more confident with the results they see from some platforms than others. According to a recent survey of 395 marketers from Forrester Research, search is the proverbial ‘old-faithful’ when it comes to driving business value, while Facebook sinks to the bottom of the list for marketer satisfaction.
Asked to rate various internet marketing channels based on the value they bring, respondents gave search engine marketing the top score of 3.83 out of five. Email distribution came in second, just behind with 3.79 points. Third place went to branded community sharing, fourth to word-of-mouth delivery (3.74) and fifth to branded blog publication (3.73).
Marketers gave search engine marketing the top score of 3.83 out of five.
In general, marketers seem to be less satisfied with social channels. Facebook was in good company at the bottom of the list, preceded by Twitter, Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn (with LinkedIn earning the highest rating). And though the social network came in last place for marketer satisfaction, it’s interesting that the aggregate score for these lower-ranking platforms were not too far behind those at the top of the list. For instance, marketers rated Facebook a 3.54 out of five points for satisfaction.
Marketers rated Facebook a 3.54 out of five points for satisfaction.
The small discrepancy between marketing channels with the highest and lowest satisfaction scores suggests that brands are seeing value across the board. However, this gap might owe more to the fact that marketers have experience measuring ROI for established channels, but lack confidence connecting the dots between social sharing and conversions. Brafton has covered studies that track conversion rates for organic traffic (averaging around 16 percent) and email outreach (which varies on delivery time), but reports about social results point only to referral traffic.
With anything – knowledge is power, and marketers must take this idiom to heart if they want to be successful on the web. Although barriers remain that make it difficult to determine which social followers become customers (without violating privacy rights), brands must develop smarter content analytics strategies. By reverse engineering on-site metrics, savvy brands can determine where their website traffic is coming from and what’s actually driving conversions.
