Tracking the ROI of Social Media

Social media is no longer an afterthought in the marketing world. It’s earned its place as a respected contributor to the communications mix. Executives are finally seeing social media as the communications, branding, and lead generation machine that it is and companies now realize that social networks have the ability to massively impact a business.

If you’re wondering why do social media or if social media even has a meaningful ROI, you’re in the wrong place. But if you’re wondering how to prove the ROI of your social media marketing and communication plans so that you can grab a bigger part of the budget, keep reading.

Check out the four most important questions (and answers. Answers are the best part!) when it comes to implementing social media as a cornerstone of your B2B marketing plan and tracking the ROI of those efforts.

1Can you Measure the ROI of Social?Let’s first just address that pesky little question, “Is there such a thing as measuring the ROI of social media?” so that we can move on. The answer? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!

If one of your customers was featured in a TV commercial in the middle of the most-watched event of the year and talked about your business positively, would your sales go up? If they spent their 30 seconds of fame talking about a negative experience with your company, would you want to be able to address it and fix it?

Industry Stat: Twitter has 271 million active monthly users. That’s over 2x the amount of

people who watched the Super Bowl in 2014.

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Should it Cost Money?Okay, so you’re on board with the whole social media idea. Maybe you’re even beginning to think it doesn’t sound so hard. Set up a Facebook and a Twitter account, maybe an Instagram and a Pinterest account if you’re feeling fancy. Throw out some content, and - voila! Engagement! Right?

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Social media takes time and it costs money.

B2B social media is more related to your business’s public relation and communication endeavors and less related to traditional marketing. This shift has taken shape because of the emphasis on messaging and tone. You want to have someone managing the accounts that knows your business, understands your customers, speaks in your brand voice, and understands how to handle communications in a crisis.

To do social media right, you also need tools. You don’t want to be tied to your computer, posting, commenting, and worrying that if you walk away for 10 minutes a massive social crisis will explode.

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To avoid being a slave to your social accounts, you need to invest in a software that will allow you to schedule social posts, track engagement, and notify you when there are any important interactions, such as retweets, comments, or private messages sent your way.

It’s also important to have a tool that will monitor the stream of what other people are saying. This can be useful for customer service, sales, and product feedback:

Customer Service: You can also listen for your specific brand names and reach out to any customers who may be having issues.

Sales: You can listen for people asking for recommendations about your products and services and pass those leads along to sales.

Feedback: Broadly, you can listen to what consumers and businesses are saying about the industry and provide that feedback to your product and services teams for consideration.

So, it’s a myth that social media shouldn’t cost money. But it doesn’t have to be expensive to get value from your time and tools and if you can save customers, generate leads, and identify ways to gain market share; the tool’s cost is absolutely worth it.

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Industry Stat: Twitter has 271 million active monthly users. That’s over 2x the amount of

people who watched the Super Bowl in 2014.

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How Do You Measure It?The first part of measuring anything is to set a goal. Do you want to increase brand awareness, identify unhappy customers, or generate new business? Make sure everyone involved is clear on the expectation before you start to measure your social strategy:

Brand awareness: If you want to increase brand awareness, community size and engagement percentage is a good place to start. If you started with 50 followers and grew to 5,000, that’s a good indication that you’ve increased brand awareness - if they’re engaged.

Identifying unhappy customers: You should work with your customer service team to identify a process for how you will handle customer complaints on social. Can you reach out online or should someone directly call the customer? Whatever you decide, make sure you are tracking the sources with the same care you would your other lead generation sources.

Generating new business: Website anaytics is your best friend. You can see how many people are coming to your website from each source. Make sure to track your baseline for referrals from each social media site and then watch it grow. You should also track video views, form completions, downloads, and newsletter signups from the content you are sharing on social.

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24So, What Does All of

This Mean?What is the key to measuring the ROI of social media? Let’s boil it down to 140 characters or less:

Understand the commitment, clearly define the objectives, and measure, measure, measure!

Salesfusion helps companies deliver more revenue. With Salesfusion’s smart marketing automation platform, marketing and sales teams are delivering more lead-to-revenue results by nurturing and surfacing the right leads into the CRM at the right time. Salesfusion’s platform also enables customer care teams to increase client satisfaction and growth through customer-centric nurture programs. By identifying lead, journey, and buyer profiles, Salesfusion is helping companies deliver more revenue than ever before.

Contact Information:855.238.6522sales@salesfusion.comwww.salesfusion.com

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