ROI from Social Media Marketing Campaigns is Trackable and Provable

By Heather Lutze, CEO Findability Group Search Marketing and CWCC member

One of the main fears about social media marketing is that there is no real way to know if it is generating more sales. Perhaps it is nothing more than a lot of time invested with no real dollars and cents return. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Thumbonomics: The Essential Business Roadmap for Social Media & Mobile Marketing Chapter Fourteen, “Measurements that Matter” addresses this issue head on, with step by step instructions to determine which metrics matter to you, and what tools you need to use to provide them.

Do you cringe when you hear the words, “metrics” or “analytics” in relation to your internet marketing campaign? Or are you blissfully ignorant, and have no idea what those words even refer to? How about the term “ROI”, which means “return on investment?”

I’d be willing to bet ROI is something you do take an interest in. That’s where the metrics come in. So if you do want to know whether or not you are getting a reasonable ROI on the time you are putting into your social media campaigns; start using the tools which can give you the metrics.

As with any marketing effort, when you begin you need a clear idea of your goals. Are you looking for market research? Branding? Reputation repair or management? Launch of a new product? More traffic to your website, resulting in higher sales?

Once your goals are set, the next step is to determine the key performance indicators required to prove your social media program is working. With the free tools available today, this is easier than it sounds. And frankly, invaluable.

Some of the highlights discussed in Chapter Fourteen:

• How to measure social media marketing success with branding, sales and conversions, new product launch, or reputation management.
• To measure branding, look at friends, followers, likes, comments, subscribers. Look at the size of your community and your overall share of voice in your industry.
• To measure conversation, try HootSuite and TweetDeck.
• To measure sales, take a look at Google Analytics. It’s free, and easy to configure.
• In a year, you will see exact measurements of your social media program’s success, what didn’t quite work as expected, and where there is more work to be done.

The chapter also includes a terrific Findability Makeover of Parelli Natural Horsemanship, showing where they were at with social media when we met them, (nowhere) what we did for them using social media, and how it impacted their business.

Heather is the widely acclaimed speaker, trainer, and consultant who literally wrote the book on search engine marketing. Two books, in fact—The Findability Formula: The Easy, Non-Technical Approach to Search Engine Marketing and the brand new Thumbonomics: The Essential Business Roadmap for Social Media & Mobile Marketing. Her writing and in-demand keynotes are delivered with the same witty, “no-geek-speak” style that has managed to demystify internet marketing for countless business owners. Breaking free of corporate “cubicle” jobs over ten years ago with nothing more than a dream of entrepreneurship and a computer in the basement, Heather built her business into a multimillion dollar company—the Findability Group. Today she leads a dedicated and slightly obsessed team of search marketing pros—their mission—to connect clients with their perfect customers online.