Infographic: How Many B2B Businesses Use Social Media Marketing and How?

I’ve preached and preached in previous articles that if your company hasn’t jumped on the social media marketing bandwagon, you’d better be scrambling, because you’re missing the boat.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how social media use is on the rise in the workplace, but this infographic shows that its not only B2C companies that are using social media for marketing.

A new study of 548 companies by Eloqua reveals that two-thirds (64% to be exact) of B2B companies currently are investing in social media marketing. (Tweet this)

My guess is that number is only going to increase, both in quantity and quality, as nearly 40% of companies surveyed said that they feel that they aren’t fully tapping the full potential of social media marketing.

In the study, it was interesting to see that a shocking 23% of companies said that their social media is not under control of any one department. (Tweet this)

While I applaud the idea of everyone within a company using social media to help advance the company’s mission, my guess is that such is not the case and it’s more lack of planning and execution.

There is nothing wrong with having multiple departments contribute to a company’s social media mission, but it does need to have stewardship under at least one department. A ship with no captain steering it is bound to end up on the rocks.

As I suspected, most organizations surveyed (83%) utilize social media marketing for branding and/or TOMA (Top-Of-Mind Awareness) purposes, which, in my opinion, should be the primary focus. (Tweet this)

Social media ROI is difficult to measure, especially in the B2B space, and too often social media marketing plans are abandoned because they can’t tie actual dollars to social media.

To those people, I quote Scott Monty, Global Digital/Multimedia Communications Manager, of Ford: “What’s the ROI of putting your pants on every day? It’s hard to measure, but there’s negative consequences for not doing it.” (Tweet this)

The same goes for social media marketing.

Thanks to Eloqua for conducting this survey and putting together this infographic (below).

-Lance Brown