McKinsey Report: What Marketers Are Saying about Social Media

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Guest Post by: Jon Stokes

A survey by McKinsey has examined the use of digital tools and technologies across the marketing departments of  792 companies from a range of industries, titles, company sizes and countries.

The report includes some very interesting findings in relation to social media. Generally, while marketing executives are aware about the importance and future of digital platforms, there are significant challenges posed from interpreting customer data and drawing insights from digital and social channels. Metrics and measurement of success is still seen to be a concern for those using social media, and there is an additional difficulty caused by internal collaboration issues.

Key social media findings from McKInsey’s report include:

  • Almost 75 percent of the surveyed companies are still in an experimental stage with social media – but they are using it to support some kind of business objective
  • 46 percent of these respondents said that their companies are using some social-media tools to complement their marketing.
  • In the next two to four years there will be a clear shift from using homepages and email as most-often used communication channel, to the use of social media sites and mobile apps
  • Of those who are responsible for brand health and reputation, 49 percent say that creating social media content or services would help, and that this should be catered for internally.

Other points of interest

  • In general terms there appears to be a awareness of the importance of using digital channels to draw customer insights, but difficulty in interpreting the data and creating actionable results.
  • Collaboration across departments and lack of leadership for overall digital

Original Post: http://www.freshnetworks.com/blog/2011/11/mckinsey-report-social-media/