What is the ROI of your Social Media?

Contents

Share

ROI – Return of Investment, something that gives goose bumps to agencies and which is highly demanded by Clients. Companies make marketing decisions based on these ROI and KPIs. How much? When? And how?

Many Social Media Agencies try their best to keep their lip sealed in terms of ROI, not because it’s impossible to measure them, but because in many cases, it makes no sense. In most cases, social media activities run like a PR where the activities are more driven to keep the brand alive rather than drive sales. But does that mean it’s not possible to drive sales through social media?

Off-course not!! Sales can be driven but a lot of resources and plans need to be executed properly in order to attain them. In case of social media, driving sales is not just leads to client conversion, but more of leads to engagement to trust to actual sales. The important factor is off course TRUST.

Social Media cannot be run aggressively like an advertisement or email campaigns. The only way social media communicates with customers is through social updates and contents, and they are always open and public; therefore any aggressiveness in the content is regarded as a spam.

Unlike email campaigns or banner ads, where we can say 10,000 mails sent or 50K impressions, 50% response rate, 1% conversion; in case of social updates, it’s hard to make such conclusions. But things are slowly changing in social media too, especially due to Facebook, which is introducing new metrics such as total impression of an updates, number of comments, clicks and so on.

But does it mean that ROI is completely measurable in case of social media? There is a popular saying in Online Media, “Don’t measure just because it is measurable, but because it’s relevant.”

To illustrate the point, let’s ask ourselves some tough question? How many people know the telephone number of your business? Or how many people have saved your business numbers in their address book? These look like stupid questions but it’s the same thing which we are measuring in social media: how many followers do you have, how many likes, how many favourites?

There are numbers that define the level of gratification for your business. But we never seem to ask such questions in case of our telephone number, though you spent lot of money in setting up the infrastructure and monthly bills and maintenance. The value of having a telephone number is about increasing the opportunity for your business. Business in simple terms means two parties agreeing to make a transaction, and telephone is a medium that can help reach out to possible parties. The same logic applies to digital media, having a website, email addresses, social profiles is about increasing your opportunity and by deciding not to be in social media just because ROI is not traceable would simply mean losing out the opportunity.

This point was made very clear by one of initiative from an Indian Taxi Driver, who put his Youtube videos where he provides his phone number for contacting. It was not necessary for him to do so, but by doing it, he increased his opportunity of doing more business.

Therefore, to all those businesses who are concerned about adopting social media? Try asking yourself what is the ROI of your telephone number?

Please participate in our Poll, Which is the most important KPI in Social Media? http://nxy.in/129mz

Image Source : tunecash.com