Many marketing companies have debated the best ways to measure the ROI for Social Media. The tremendous expansion of Social Media has lead to more businesses implementing social networks into their marketing strategies. However, the quality of these strategies varies greatly. To decide on the profitability of these campaigns, one most first ask how to measure the ROI of social media’. Here we discuss that question in the hope of providing a number of key performance indicators.  

Social Media does provide directly leads. However, the main two benefits of social media are that it acts as a brand awareness tool and a PR machine; both in terms of reducing the visibility of negative comments, and in terms of presenting positive views of a business. The problem with these benefits is that neither are that easy to track.

However, the costs/benefits of Social Media can be compared to other forms of marketing.  For example, social media generally provides more traffic to a businesses’ website per pound than Google’s Adwords or other Pay Per Click campaigns. Therefore, in general, social media provides a better cost per click ratio. This comparison can partially justify the expenditure on social media, although it does not take into account the positive PR elements, or the fact that the ‘click throughs’ from social media will generally be better engaged with the business.

At Angels Media we print monthly Insights Reports from Facebook Business Page Insights. This tells us how often people are engaging and what type of content is performing. We also have our clients registered on Google Analytics. Once one has a clear understanding of the above dynamics, it is much easier to measure costs and ROI when conversions are resulting directly from social media.

To put it clearly, Social Media generates soft leads, the conversion into sale will depend on proactive actions from the sales team to call, e-mail or visit/meet with the customer, once the lead is successfully generated and passed on. Social Media is, in summary, a 'one line item' on the budget of many marketing channels, it is one marketing sector that plays its role amongst many other aspects to boost the overall ROI of any business. It’s up to the company to understand its role and integrate it into the overall marketing plan of the company. Excluding Social Media simply means 'missing a link' in the marketing division of any business that wishes to grow and utilise all effective channels when pursuing company objectives and growth.

Any questions please email Chanel@AngelsMedia.co.uk