Survey shows marketers find social media to be a challenge

A recent study performed by IBM has shown that marketing heads are overwhelmed by the rising quantity of customer data offered by social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, and while they acknowledge the high potential of social marketing, they do not feel that they are adequately capable of harnessing this potential.

The survey indicated that among chief marketing officers, only 26 percent are tracking blogs, and only 40 percent monitor any form of online communication at all. That said, a sizeable 82 percent do say that they continue to rely on traditional marketing methods of research in order to guide their strategies and decisions.

Some of the leading consumer brands, such as Starbucks, Nike, and Coca-Cola, have already implemented massive social media campaigns in order to better communicate with their customers and find out what they want with greater accuracy.

However, according to the 1,700 CMOs that took part in the surveys, the majority of them continue to find it challenging to prove that social media marketing investments will bring about a worthwhile return.

One of the CMOs who took part in the interviews for the survey, works for a consumer products firm and said that “The perfect solution is to serve each consumer individually. The problem? There are 7 billion of them.”

Equally, though, the survey also showed that 82 percent of them do intend to boost their use of social media within the next 3 to 5 years. Technology firms such as IBM are taking this fact to heart and are working to capitalize on the need these organizations will have to analyze the data available through email, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and the like.