3 Ideas For Measuring Social Media Marketing ROI
March 23, 2010
Measuring ROI in social media marketing is important because as an industry we need to demonstrate the value social media brings to marketing efforts. And I believe if we can show ROI and value, social media will gain additional budget, and the body of knowledge of how to manage social media marketing efforts successfully will grow. Here are three ideas for measuring ROI.
1. Metrics - Put metrics in place, for example, measure your standings in search engine rankings compare your results today with the results after you've run your social media efforts regularly.
2. Track Resources - Determine how much effort you are putting into your social media marketing efforts. Track what agencies are doing for you, and track how much time your internal staff are putting into monitoring, triage, response and writing. If you are using a combination of structured resources and organic resources for your social media efforts, you will find it more difficult to track employee time, but ask your colleagues to track how much effort they are putting into social media. Explain that if you can show ROI, you’ll be able to provide a justification for more funding, and technology resources.
3. Tie Metrics To Goals - If your goal is sales, make sure you have some way of capturing sales results, you might not get direct sales, but social media can certainly influence sales. If you gain higher search rankings, and that gives you more leads you will want to track the relation between your social media efforts, higher search rankings and sales. Give new prospects who are leads ways to tell you how they found you, but don’t depend upon their memories, develop tracking processes to determine how people signed up for products from your social media properties.
If your goal is customer retention, use social CRM software to discover how much interaction within social media is needed to help influence customers when it comes to improving retention. If you can show a direct correlation between interaction with customers and their retention rates, you may have just built a stronger case for social media than offering a discount, by demonstrating ROI.
1. Metrics - Put metrics in place, for example, measure your standings in search engine rankings compare your results today with the results after you've run your social media efforts regularly.
2. Track Resources - Determine how much effort you are putting into your social media marketing efforts. Track what agencies are doing for you, and track how much time your internal staff are putting into monitoring, triage, response and writing. If you are using a combination of structured resources and organic resources for your social media efforts, you will find it more difficult to track employee time, but ask your colleagues to track how much effort they are putting into social media. Explain that if you can show ROI, you’ll be able to provide a justification for more funding, and technology resources.
3. Tie Metrics To Goals - If your goal is sales, make sure you have some way of capturing sales results, you might not get direct sales, but social media can certainly influence sales. If you gain higher search rankings, and that gives you more leads you will want to track the relation between your social media efforts, higher search rankings and sales. Give new prospects who are leads ways to tell you how they found you, but don’t depend upon their memories, develop tracking processes to determine how people signed up for products from your social media properties.
If your goal is customer retention, use social CRM software to discover how much interaction within social media is needed to help influence customers when it comes to improving retention. If you can show a direct correlation between interaction with customers and their retention rates, you may have just built a stronger case for social media than offering a discount, by demonstrating ROI.