Marketers are finding social media is proving to be an important new route of communication in difficult economic times but also fear it’s “out of control.”

Social networks are becoming increasingly important for marketers as they’re now an important part of people’s lives.

Direct marketing must adapt to cater for the changes brought about by the growth of social media.

This is the view of management expert Don Tapscot, who’s scheduled to speak at the Institute of Direct Marketing’s lunch later this week.

Precision Marketing claims that 63% of consumers refer to the Internet when making a purchase, yet businesses are missing out on an important source of customer insight by failing to analyse information from social networks.

A  new survey, carried out by predictive analytics software provider SPSS, showed that almost 90 per cent of businesses do not use social networks as a means of surveying customer opinion.