A friend and mine, Rob Ellison (CEO Cucku), and I were at the Old Pro in Palo Alto the other day, drinking some beers and talking about social media amongst other things. One of the topics was around the benefits of social media and trying to assess a value for different types of business models. So I was curious what data was out there on this so started searching. I came across an article on eMarketer that included a Poll from the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG). While it didn’t have the exact data i was looking for I found one of the responses very surprising. Only 42% of US marketing executives thought social media provided market research benefits.

Now in fairness I don’t have access to the question so it could be how it was worded explains low response, but I’ll assume it was worded clearly, probably something like “select the Main Benefits social media provides (or can provide) to your business. Pretty standard right?

Why so low? I mean think about it. When you want to make a product or service you have a target customer profile. You spend a lot of time and often money on research to learn what they want, you spend a lot of money to advertise and get your message out to them, you build your products and services based on what they want, so doesn’t the ability to engage directly with your audience (customers) give you direct access to finding out interest in a product and valuable data to assess market size and demand? So why then would only 42% of marketing executives think social media provided any market research benefit?

I’ve not found an updated version so am curious if this has changed and by how much. With all the visibility of facebook and twitter and the growing increase of marketers venturing into social media over the last year I have to believe this will be much higher. Sure, it’s not the only source you’ll need but it’s a pretty darn important one.

Do you use social media for testing product ideas and willingness to use/pay?