Recently, BIA/Kelsey released some data showing that 3 in 10 SMBs advertising on Twitter claim “excellent” or “extraordinary” ROI from their efforts. Now the researchers have released further data which puts Twitter in context alongside other social channels. As it turns out, SMBs advertising on Facebook are even more excited about their campaigns: almost half rated their ROI as “excellent” (10-19 times spend; 26.1%) or “extraordinary” (20+ times spend; 19.3%).
Several other social channels are also ahead of Twitter in perceived ROI:
- Among SMBs spending with 3rd parties to create, brand and update blogs, 37% considered the return generated from those efforts to be “excellent” (17.6%) or “extraordinary” (19.4%);
- Among those spending to post videos on YouTube, 34.6% perceive their ROI to be “excellent” (18.8%) or “extraordinary” (15.8%);
- Among those spending with 3rd parties to create, brand and update their Facebook pages, 34.1% consider the return generated from those efforts to be “excellent” (19.9%) or “extraordinary” (14.2%); and
- Among those spending to include videos on their websites, 31.7% perceive their ROI to be “excellent” (18.9%) or “extraordinary” (12.8%).
The only channel behind Twitter is LinkedIn, with less than one-quarter of users perceiving their ROI to be “excellent” (12.6%) or “extraordinary” (11.3%).
BIA/Kelsey theorizes that perceived ROI may be trailing for Twitter and LinkedIn as they are newer channels that are used far less commonly by SMBs than Facebook ads, for example. Also, measuring returns on owned media channels can be more difficult than for Facebook ads.
Compared to last year, each of the channels (with the exception of LinkedIn, which was presumably not included in last year’s survey) have higher perceived returns this year. The biggest improvements were for Twitter, followed by Facebook ads.
Facebook recent declared that it has 25 million active SMB pages (discussed here by MarketingLand), using an expanded definition of what constitutes an SMB. Facebook had reported 20 million active small business pages in its Q3 earnings release. Prior data from BIA/Kelsey indicates that almost as many SMBs are using Facebook pages as are websites.
