It’s Time for Social Media ROI

It’s 2019 and way past time for social media to be considered a reliable, and measurable, communications channel. It has been a key marketing channel, and in some cases, the only channel, that businesses, organizations, and the government use to reach their audiences.

It’s time to ensure that the social media budget is returning a strong ROI to the marketing and operations of the organization. And because this key component of your business strategy is going to take more time and resources, you should definitely know all about social media ROI. Here’s a quick primer on how to establish social media ROI for your business.

Setting Your Goals

Defining what you want social media to do for your overall sales and operational goals is your first step. What are you trying to achieve?  More followers, more sales, increased traffic to your website, foot traffic to your brick and mortar operation? You must define these goals and make them SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.

Social media ROI boils down to how much you’re currently spending and how much your social media impact matters to your business right now.

Benchmarking

Before you start measuring your social activities, you need to know where you’re currently at – better known as taking a benchmark of where you are starting. Here are some things you will want to know before you start your social media campaign.

  • Existing website analytics (i.e., visitors, referral links, SEO rankings, etc.)
  • Current customer satisfaction scores you are tracking as well as customer ratings on external directories (i.e., Facebook or Google My Business recommendations)
  • KPIs you currently track (i.e., cost of customer acquisition, advertising budget, and allocation, average sale, average sales per month, etc.) to see how these change over time
  • Social profiles numbers you already have (i.e., number of connections on LinkedIn, Facebook fans, blog subscribers and Twitter followers)

Understanding The Importance Of ROI

Review your social media channels daily and determine which social media channel is bringing your company the most revenue at present and why. Also, note areas in which you could improve. Monitoring these will enable you to make changes for the better.

Measuring Your Social Media

Armed with your social media goals, you need to measure your social media performance and be ready to A/B test content, imagery, promotions, etc. to find the optimum messaging that resonates with your target audiences.

Tie your results to business goals

The impact of your social media campaign should be measurable and tie back to the operational business goals of the company. The value and specifics of each link you share on social media should be trackable to your website, call center, CRM platform, public relations campaign, etc. This makes it easier for you to see which links are building traffic to the website, phone calls to the call center, increasing participation in events, or making donations. You should use an integrated marketing channel dashboard to ensure that you have a comprehensive look at all your marketing data into one easy-to-use report.

If you need help assessing your social media ROI, we can help. Contact me at rmarston@engagemarketing.biz.

 

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