Survey: Most US And UK Marketers Just Beginning To Adopt Social Media

Thirty-eight percent of senior marketers in the U.S. and Britain say their companies are still just dipping their toes in the water of social media, with most saying fears about return-on-investment have kept them from diving in wholeheartedly. However, the survey of 400 senior marketing managers conducted by InSites Consulting found that 69% of companies did have Facebook pages, 57% have Twitter accounts and 48% have a company page on LinkedIn.

InSites concluded that while many companies have created accounts as a social media tactic, most have not strategically integrated social media into their business processes. Integrating social media fully can have positive effects both for customer satisfaction and financial results, according to InSites.

The researchers found that companies from the financial and health industry are lagging and technology, telco and media firms are ahead.

The most popular social network among business-to-consumer companies was Facebook, while business-to-business companies were more focused on LinkedIn. Twitter was adopted in about the same numbers by both types of companies. Generally speaking, companies that provide services, rather than products, are more likely to use social networks, but product companies use YouTube in larger numbers.

Barriers to more complete integration cited by the marketers included a lack of support from top management (39%), a lack of fit of social media with their product offering (42%) and the thought that social media integration offers no clear financial return (48%).

Here’s the full Slideshare presentation: