Only 37% of Marketers Think Their Facebook Advertising Is Effective [Study]

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Social Media Examiner has released the 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report. Of all the questions they posed to marketers this year, the thing that stands out the most is not how many businesses are using social media, but how many aren't actually tracking how effective their social media marketing actually is.

Of those who participated in the survey, 97 percent said they were using social media for their businesses and 86 percent considered it to be an important part of their marketing efforts.

Moving onto Facebook specifically, it isn't surprising that 92 percent were using Facebook as part of their social media efforts and that 49 percent considered Facebook to be their most important social media platform.

But what is surprising is the fact that only 37 percent of marketers think their Facebook advertising is effective. That is a pretty astonishing number. Is this a metric that shows Facebook marketing isn't effective, or is it really to do with the fact marketers aren't properly tracking those Facebook efforts into ROI?

The report also reveals that larger businesses were much more likely to agree that Facebook was effective, but this could also be from a number of factors, such as higher brand awareness overall and targeted traffic from their company brand site to their Facebook page. For smaller businesses and lesser-known brands, Facebook marketing could definitely seem to have a lesser impact without a well-known and familiar brand behind it.

Another interesting factor is the relationship between the amount of experience using social media and the amount of time spent marketers spend on their social media efforts. Fifty percent of those with less than 12 months experience with social media are spending 5 or fewer hours on social media, while for those who have been doing social media for at least two years, 70 percent of those are spending 6 or more hours on their social media efforts each week.

You can download the entire report here (only available for free until May 30).

This article was originally published on Search Engine Watch.