Forty-one per cent of firms are using social networks to win new business, up eight percentage points on last year.
Based on the responses of over 4,000 UK business owners, the Regus survey paints an encouraging picture of firms’ use of social media.
Social networking has evolved from a nice-to-have to a necessity, with the majority of businesses in the UK (66 per cent) saying that their marketing initiatives would suffer without social media activity.
Other key findings:
- Globally, there has been a rise of seven per cent in the proportion of businesses successfully recruiting new customers through social networks.
- One third of companies in the UK (33 per cent) devote up to 20 per cent of their marketing budget to business social networking activity.
- 52 per cent of businesses globally and 48 per cent in the UK use the channel to engage, connect with and inform existing customers.
- In the UK, 50 per cent of firms encourage their employees to join business networks, compared to 53 per cent globally.
“More and more companies are using social networking as a successful acquisition tool,” says Celia Donne, regional director at Regus.
“Particularly in the UK, where one in three social network users is a ‘fan’, ‘follower’ or ‘friend’ of a company page or profile, firms should expect to see an increasing proportion of marketing budget being allocated to this activity.”
Here’s a handy infographic to show the data:
