Brands Fail To Use Google+ For Marketing

A year after it was launched, Google+ has hardly managed to live up to expectations in terms of user adoption and marketing influence.

According to a new UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report 2012 only one in three brands have set up a company account on the most recent social network, while 56% have not made any effort to tweak their search marketing strategy with regard to Google+.

In addition, more than two thirds of the brands polled say they do not know how Google+ influences their search engine results, and only one in ten are able to measure its effects on brand visibility.

However, a significant proportion of brands consider that Google+ will gain more prominence in future, with close to half of them planning to make better use of the social platform in years to come.

More broadly, the report also reveals that the majority of companies still see social media and search as two separate components of their marketing strategies, with 43% making efforts to integrate both channels.

Overall, just over three quarters of UK brands use social media as a marketing tool and 75% of them spend less than £10,000 per year. Despite the relatively low budgets, almost four in five companies have registered an increase in their referred traffic from social media over the past year, compared to less than two thirds which report growth from organic search.