How to Know if Your Social Media Marketing Strategy is Effective

How to Know if Your Social Media Marketing Strategy is Effective

A synopsis of Brent Csutoras article on Inc.

What is ROI in Social Media?

Social Media return on investment (ROI) may be less straightforward than expected, it is no longer just revenue minus expenses. In social media the ROI can vary and is not purely revenue driven and may include according to Csutoras:

• “Customer lifetime value: Transactions --  sales
• Customer referral value: Referrals -- leads, traffic
• Customer influence value: Word of mouth -- branding, reach
• Customer knowledge value: Information -- market research”

The most commonly used measurement for social media marketing success is engagement which does not necessarily equate to success in broader business goals

How Do You Determine ROI in Social Media?

First it is important to evaluate what channels your audience is most active on, and determine the resources available to your company as they begin to invest in social media.

1) Know Your Goal (Why are you joining social?)

Do you have realistic goals for joining social media? These goals must be clearly defined.

Some goals suggested by Csutoras include increasing web traffic, leads, sales, and/or customer engagement. He also suggests reducing customer service costs, gathering information, and gaining exposure to a new audience.

2) Align Your Resources (What internal knowledge do you have?)

Look at your existing staff and see who has knowledge from active participation on a specific social channel, Csutoras suggests that a better ROI may come from using someone already in house- here I would begin to offer a warning as social media is often looked at as a less rigorous part of marketing and using your most active Pinterest user/employee will not result in the most effective Pinterest campaigns (the user and marketer knowledge varies greatly)

3) Reality Check (Are You Planning for a Declining Channel?)

Unless a channel is the only platform your audience uses, it makes more sense to prioritize growing channels or ones with greater campaign visibility. Csutoras offers Snapchat’s declining growth as a measure which may persuade one to campaign on the growing Instagram instead. Another stalwart he warns against is Facebook which has reduced the chance of Facebook Page content being seen in a user’s newsfeed. – my thought is that a key to understand here is true social campaigns will struggle to be effective without a paid component.

4) Analyze the Data (What’s Your ROI?)

Starting with a clear goal and designing a campaign to maximize that return is important. This allows you to establish tracking and assign values to these metrics, and only with this forward planning can we best answer if social media campaign showed an ROI.