3 definitive steps to prove the ROI of social.

Transcription

1 3 definitive steps to prove the ROI of social.

2 Marketers know that calculating return on investment can be difficult. But measuring social ROI? That s a whole other beast. In fact, in a recent survey from TrustRadius 60% of social marketers said measuring ROI is the single most challenging aspect of their social media programs. While many companies are able spew out numbers about impressions and likes, few can correlate the exact customer behavior that led to that engagement and even fewer can show how that engagement led to a true return on investment. But all is not lost. It s an elusive goal, but calculating the ROI of social is possible. Here are three steps you can take to connect the dots between investment, engagement, and revenue. 60% of social marketers said MEASURING ROI IS THE SINGLE MOST CHALLENGING ASPECT OF THEIR SOCIAL MEDIA PROGRAMS

3 1. Track investment across channels. You can t measure ROI if you don t know what your investment is in the first place. For example, it s easy to see your Facebook ad spend for the previous month, but what about other associated investments? Like: Contract spend for the graphic designer that created the ads Time that your social media manager spent managing the campaign Social listening software that you used to develop your strategy Etc. Without a holistic view of the costs that go into producing your social marketing efforts, there s simply no way to accurately determine whether you re profiting from them. First, determine what needs to be included in the investment portion of your ROI calculation, and then gather that data for every channel.

4 2. Measure engagement to revenue. According to TrustRadius, 50% of marketers struggle to connect social activity to business outcomes. So how can you tell if social engagement is translating to revenue? In order to arrive at revenue, you need to track your social media audience throughout their customer journey, from click to cash. For example, by monitoring everyone who clicks a Twitter link to your blog, you can determine what percentage of those people go on to subscribe to your newsletter. From there, you can combine this subscriber data with information from your CRM to suss out how many of those subscribers became customers, as well as how much money those customers spent with your company. Now you know exactly how much revenue you generated from promoting your blog post on Twitter, and can use that insight to determine the revenue generated from every social channel and optimize all of your social activities.

5 3. Calculate ROI across channels. Revenue/cost of investment is a simple formula, but gathering the information you need to credibly make the calculation isn t. Once you have all the right information, however, you can credibly and accurately calculate your return on investment by dividing the social revenue of each channel by the expenditures you paid to run them. To do so, you need to bring data from all your social marketing channels in one place so you can compare performance and better allocate budget in the future. For instance, maybe you ll realize that you re generating more ROI from Facebook than display advertising, allowing you to shift your budget accordingly. By compiling an extensive, accurate view of your revenue and expenditure across a variety of different activities, you can make smarter decisions and get the most bang for your social buck.

6 Know social ROI with Domo. Domo helps marketers monitor and measure their social ROI in real time. With your finger on your company s social pulse, you can quit worrying about likes and start focusing on driving business value. Learn more at domo.com info@domo.com