The best way to convince your boss that you need a budget for social media marketing is to show them the numbers. Executive buy-in typically happens with positive dollar signs. Additionally, when you are paying close attention to ROI metrics, you can better understand where to focus your efforts and allocate resources.
According to a recent survey , social media spending increased 234% from 2009 to 2017, accounting for 11.7% of total marketing budgets. Still, only 20.3% of marketers say they are able to prove the impact quantitatively.
Social media is not an exact science, but like other marketing strategies, you must be able to drive conversions and prove your return on investment. The ROI through social media marketing is to know what to track in the first place.
Social Media ROI
Your social media ROI truly depends on your goals. Do you want to gain value through brand recognition? Are you considering customer satisfaction or revenue?
Generally speaking, social media ROI is the sum of all the actions in your marketing strategy that create value. In other words, what is the return after you consider all the time, money, and resources allocated to a campaign?
Setting Social Objectives
When tracking ROI on social media campaigns, many businesses do not know where to begin. Deciding what metrics to measure Here are a few tips you can ask about each number:
- Does this align with our overall business objectives?
- Will these metrics help me make decisions?
- Do we have the capacity to measure our metrics effectively?
It’s important to choose your business. This can be done by adding metrics that complement your existing vision and departmental goals. Your social goals can be based on a lot of different themes like:
- Brand awareness or perception
- Customer experience and engagement
- Business conversions (ie lead acquisition)
- Security and risk mitigation
Source: Simply Measured
The objectives you want to represent just how social media wants to help your organization achieve success. It can be different for every business, so try and think outside the box, rather than simply looking at money.
The Top Social Metrics That Drive ROI
Although the metrics you can choose to track through your goals, the easiest way to measure. If you are still scratching your head, these five are the easiest to start with:
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Reach
One of the most popular of social metrics, your „reach“ involves how many people are actually reaching through social media. For Facebook, these are „fans,“ on Twitter, it’s „followers,“ and LinkedIn calls your audience „group members.“ The concept is all the same. How Many People Are Tuned Into Your Brand Messages Through Social Platforms?
Pay attention to this number. You always want to see it increasing. As the more followers you have, the more exposure your message will receive-which leads to a higher ROI. If your reach metric has plateaued, switch up your game and focus on gaining new people.
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Site Traffic
All social media efforts should be directed back to your funnel. This can be as short as a one-page landing site, blog, or as extensive as a branded website with several pages. One major goal you should have as much traffic as possible.
There are many tools you can use to track your website’s referral sources (see below). Keep track of how much traffic you are receiving from social media. As your reach improves, your traffic metric should also be escalate. If it does not, you know you have a problem with your content.
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Leads Generated
Some may argue that this is the most important social media metric to track because „leads generated“ can easily be traced to revenue. If you are missing out on your traffic metrics, you should be able to determine how many leads you are receiving from social media. To improve your leads, you want to increase your reach, which will stimulate more traffic.
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Conversion rate
Do you know what the visit-to-lead conversion rate is for your social media traffic? In layman’s, how many people come to your site from social media, purchase / sign-up for your product / service? Although this may seem like a useless metric, it actually helps you to differentiate between different social platforms.
Comparing traffic from separate platforms is the key to drive down your efforts. This, inevitably, wants to increase your return on investment.
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Audience engagement
These are the metrics that speak. However, adding value for consumers is a prime way to attract leads and drive sales. Audience engagement is as simple as it sounds. It’s all the numbers related to how consumers interact with your brand. The following are just a few common actions that can be measured for engagement on social media:
- Likes
- shares
- follows
- retweets
- Comments
Although these are often referred to as „vanity“ metrics, they can not give you an insight into where they are. For example, are your clients responding to a particular type of content? Perhaps they love inspirational quotes. In that case, you may want to pad your content strategy with more of that kind. Audience engagement metrics wants to give you the direction you need to go where the money is.
Social Media ROI Tools
Once you understand the theory behind social media ROI, you may wonder what exactly you need to get there. There are plenty of tools that are super user-friendly and can help you finely track metrics, analyze the results, and report efficiently. The following are some of the most useful social metrics tools around:
Google Analytics: If you are looking for a robust conversion funnel, this is the tried and true site. Google Analytics wants help you track metrics like on-site conversions, leads, traffic, and everything related to your social media campaigns.
Hootsuite Impact: Hootsuite wants to help you measure your ROI across all platforms that are paid, owned and earned social channels. Although you can make executive reports with the software, all recommendations are given in plain-language and are easy to understand.
Facebook Pixels: This is a small piece of code you can place on your site that wants to help you track all of your conversions from Facebook ads (so yes, this involves investing in ads). Pixels lets you track everything from leads to sales and social behavior. You can even use it in conjunction with other ad optimization and targeting tools, like AdEspresso and Hootsuite Ads .
It may seem counterintuitive to try and measure something as immeasurable as human behavior, but the signs are proving it can be done. Predictive analytics is driving business. More companies are able to study their customers and produce results like a genius. If you know what the customer wants before they even ask, they are just one for life.
Source: Feast Interactive
Gauging social metrics is about understanding your audience, and when you make the effort to do so, it means you make more money. Social metrics are more than just money, so it’s about establishing value for your people and creating a community around your brand. And when you do that, your ROI will thank you.