Only 44% of marketers are satisfied with Twitter as a marketing partner today

Responding to the results, Forrester analyst Nate Elliott has suggested that marketers are using Twitter for the wrong objective.

“Marketers’ most common objective on Twitter is to build brand awareness. But consumers are most likely to become a fan or follower of a company in social media after they’ve already bought from that company. This means that marketers would have more luck using Twitter to engage their existing customers than to find new ones,” he said.

“Twitter’s marketing business is still relatively young — its ads have been generally available for only about three years — but that business must mature quickly.

“The good news? We believe that Twitter is heading in the right direction. It carefully tests its new marketing offerings before unleashing them on the market. It has brought marketers innovative targeting criteria, like the ability to target users based on what TV show they’re watching. And if it can help marketers build genuine connections with their customers, rather than just running ads, then Twitter could become the go-to site for the kind of social marketing that marketers are hungry for — the kind of social marketing we believe Facebook has left behind.”

A surprising number of marketers said they’re not getting enough value across many of Facebook’s advertising platforms.

The research found only 51 per cent of marketers were satisfied with buying paid ads on the network, while just 53 per cent said they were satisfied with the value promoting updates to a branded Facebook page offered.

Email marketing is the channel 68 per cent of marketers in the US, UK, and Canada are most satisfied with, closely followed by on-site ratings and reviews (66 per cent) and search marketing (66 per cent).