Two thirds (66%) of marketers working for companies with an annual turnover of more than $100m believe social media is “integral to business strategy” whilst 67% agree its “integral to their marketing mix”.

That’s according to the sixth quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing by Adobe and Econsultancy, which surveyed more than 650 digital marketers.

Additionally, the report found that just 22% of those surveyed claimed they are able to manage social data successfully whilst 70% of marketers across agency and client-side believe social media needs to be more rooted in data.

Econsultancy research director Linus Gregoriadis said: “Marketers are awash with social-related data coming from a range of marketing tools related to monitoring, managing and measuring social activity. The challenge is to make sense of that information in the context of broader marketing campaigns and business objectives.”

Meanwhile, in terms of social media measurement, just 28% of smaller companies and 42% of larger companies surveyed admitted they measure their performance against defined social media objectives.

Neil Morgan, senior director of digital marketing solutions at Adobe EMEA, said: “Social marketers are recognising that they cannot rely merely on results focused on fans, followers and top level sentiment, but need metrics and objectives with long-term and meaningful significance. Mature social media marketing is about customer segmentation, multichannel integration and business impact.”