Recently, I presented on New Marketing Labs TV (NML-TV) on the topic of “Assessing ROI for Social Media Campaigns.” I addressed the question which many folks ask, “Is my social media campaign effective?” I was joined on the show by Chris Penn, Vice President of Strategy and Innovation at the Sky Factory and Nichole Kelly, Director of Social Media at CareOne Debt Relief Services.
Here are some of the tips which we gave on this topic:
- First of all, you need to have an overall strategy in regards to your social media campaigns. When crafting a strategy, you should keep the following in mind:
- Define your target audience and get an in-depth understanding of their problems and questions
- Become a trusted source of information for your target audience
- Build an online presence with relevant content
- Make it easy to transition the client from learning from you to buying from you
- Measure results.
“Ok…” You’re saying, that’s a good starting point. “But, what type of results should I be looking for?”
Well, glad you asked. Here are a few areas where people commonly look for results:
- Exposure and buzz
- Branding
- Reputation management
- Sales and new business
- Exposure and traffic
- Subscribers and repeat traffic
- Links
- Rankings
Now, all the above are very interesting metrics, but my colleague Chris Penn would point out that you need to differentiate between diagnostic metrics and objective metrics:
- Diagnostic Metrics: Tell you how the trip is going
- Objective Metrics: Tell you when you have arrived at your destination. And, at the end of the day, the most important objective metric is a financial ROI.
Of course, all business folks will tell you the simple formula used to calculate an ROI. It is easily defined as ROI = (E – S) / S where E = “money you earned” and “S = the money you spent.
When calculating the money you spent, be sure to include the “opportunity cost” of the time spent by personnel on the marketing campaigns.
Nichole Kelly gave us some good thoughts on other factors which we should consider when assessing the “money earned” and “money spent” variables, including:
- Improved Customer Retention Rate
- Decreased Operational Costs
- Increased Usage of Self-Help Options
- Customer “Saves” (turning around a previously dissatisfied customer)
- Cross-sells
- Improved Process Innovations
To learn more about all of these tips, please feel free to view the entire episode:
If you can’t see the video, you can find it over here:
You can delve even deeper into the calculation of ROI by reviewing this video and these worksheets from Chris.
You can tune into NMLTV live every Friday from 2-3p EST. Follow the conversation and jump in using #NMLTV on Twitter. If you missed any episodes, you can dig through the entire NMLTV archive.
