By Chris Lee

According to the recent Marketing Week/Ball & Hoolahan salary survey, more than half of companies are cutting their marketing spend in 2012. Every year stories report that marketers are under more pressure than ever to deliver return on investment, but this year it rings true more than ever, according to one expert.

NMK spoke with Simon Morris, marketing director of Adobe Systems’ Digital Marketing business unit, to understand more about how marketers can link their social media marketing activities to sales, especially social media activities.

Like it or not...

Morris told NMK that it is not enough that marketers base return on investment (ROI) on the amount of people who follow their company on Twitter or ‘Like’ it on Facebook.

“Fans and followers are the web hits of our generation – real success needs to be measured beyond this and link back to how it is impacting the bottom line,” he said.

Morris highlighted findings from a recent report by Econsultancy, which highlighted that while 84 per cent of companies are using or striving to use social data to understand marketing ROI, only 12 per cent believe they are harnessing it in the right way. Morris believes this is evidence enough that effective social media measurement needs to become a business priority.

Another recent report from the CMO Council recently highlighted the apparently massive gap between what consumers want from brands on social media channels and what brands think that they want, suggesting that brands are missing the mark when it comes to targeting consumers.

The report found that consumers engage with brands on social channels largely to learn about new products (55 per cent), enter unique promotions or contents or to play games (65 per cent) that are offered specifically through these channels.

Impacting the bottom line...

Adobe’s Morris welcomed the fact that businesses recognise the value of social media, but the challenge now was for them to measure their activities to make sure they benefit specific business objectives.

Adobe itself operates a social analytics website.

“The comfort in all of this however is there are tools now available to enable marketers to measure their social activity and tie this back to business impact,” he added. “When used properly they are able to pinpoint how conversations and social media engagement such as ‘likes’, comments and page visits, drive important actions such as orders and revenue. The tools can also drill down into the actual conversation so marketers can evolve or tweak their campaigns accordingly.

“As a result we can expect to see more brands and businesses committing budget to social media marketing in 2012 and marketers producing more effective campaigns as a result of this added insight,” Morris concluded.