Make the Case for Social Media through Measurement and ROI

So your boss thinks all this Social Media and Twitter stuff is a bunch of hullabaloo.  You’ve got to make the case knowing that in order to get Social Media going in your company in this economic environment you’ll need to take funding from some other marketing budget source, which means your butt is on the line if it crashes and burns.

This reminds me of the scenario a few years back when I was trying to convince my higher-ups that we needed to reduce our print budget and re-invest it in the Internet (this seems so ancient now).

So show the boss all the facts and figures about consumers connecting online, the growth of Social Media, and its impact on attitudes and behaviors, but also show him how it can be tracked and measured.

It is important to remember there is not a silver-bullet when it comes to measuring Social Media.  It all depends on your goals.  Ultimately, the objective is to drive a closer connection to your customer so you can sell more stuff, but you’ve got to break it down into specific goals to make it more tangible and measureable. Is it to drive awareness, use it as a promotional tool, to use it as a research tool, to be more customer-service oriented, or build more customer-centric products?  You may have multiple goals.  Just make sure they are measureable and you have strategies and tactics to back it up.

My advice is to start with the basic measurements first and then get more specific.  If you make it too complicated upfront no one in the organization will get it.  This will help avoid paralysis-by-analysis syndrome too.  Start with ‘engagement’ metrics that you should be monitoring as part of your marketing initiatives already:

• Unique visitors
• Time spent on site
• Frequency of visits
• Depth of visit
• RSS Feed Subscriptions
• Site Bookmarking

Conversion is where the rubber meets the road though.  So ensuring you are collecting reliable conversion data for connections and readers filling out prospect forms, Social Media readers clicking over to your retail environment, or purchasing items is critical.  Having all the social networking friends or readers in the world won’t matter a bit to a ROI-minded boss if you can’t demonstrate how any of your social network is actually taking action.

Now take your measurement to the next level.  Make your reports comparative to drive business decisions.  Compare ROI of traffic generated from Social Media vs. SEO/PPC.  Furthermore segment visitors based on social networking traits. For example, did people who came through Social Media stay longer than people who came to you from other sources?  Did they look at more pages?  Measure how many people post to your online discussion group, comment on your blog posts, upload pictures and videos and/or answer your surveys. How many willingly sign up to be part of your online customer advisory council? These are people who care.  They have opinions, and more importantly are willing to express them. They are engaged.

Finally, I made the point earlier about using Social Media as a way to help measure the success of your traditional campaigns.  By integrating Social Media into your traditional media you can convert passive listeners into active listeners and begin conversations with consumers.  Are your TV or print campaigns encouraging consumers to join a conversation with you?  Once you do this you can then begin to segment customers who are conversing and engaging with you.

The key takeaway is that without some sort of benchmark, it’s impossible to determine your ROI.  Otherwise you are developing a social media program just because everyone else is doing it.  Use measurement as way to help sell Social Media as a viable marketing tool to add to your marketing arsenal.

Other links you might be interested in are:

I used this article by Jim Sterne as reference:

http://www.wdfm.com/marketing-tips/jim-sterne-social-media.php

Aaron Uhrmacher’s article is also very helpful resource:

http://mashable.com/2008/07/31/measuring-social-media-roi-for-business/

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