ROI of social media –many a slip between the cup and the lip

After meeting two medium sized clients in the CPG space, (who shall remain un-named) successively over the last two days, one detail emerged that companies have no idea of mapping the data collected from social media to the business objectives /ROI and what else to do with this data.
Both these companies are spending a lot with their interactive agencies to build a very high level of engagement on the social media but only use a part of the data that comes in .As we know from the class that there are many companies and products which provide web analytics.
According to e-marketeer “A 2010 survey from Web analytics service Omniture similarly showed that marketers were unable to measure marketing effectiveness across the purchase funnel. Asked which analytics would give them the most actionable insights, marketers said the importance of marketing cost, orders, average order size and conversion rate. But they had the greatest ability to measure visits, page views, page views per visit and click-throughs
The same measurement problems existed in mobile, social and video channels: Only 30% could measure mobile app or post-video conversions, and 41% could measure social marketing conversion. Overall, 80% said it was important to measure ROI from online activities, but just 31% could effectively do so.’’
Some of my other clients (very large CPG groups), over-think the issue. So what we have is data overload, unnecessary dashboards tracking unnecessary metrics, integration issues with IT systems like Business intelligence reports, traditional CRM and the newly fangled social CRM.
In my opinion, the solution needs to be somewhere in the middle .Analytics cannot be the exclusive domain of Marketing and Brand managers. This team needs to have a seat at the table where business decisions are made in order to design effective insights and connect them to the financial KPIs or business objectives. Where data transcends logical conclusions, simplicity and practical aspects of actionable insights should determine the effectiveness of analytics.
Save yourself some time and money. Keep it simple but relevant. Put that data to use!