You are here: Home » Blog » Featured » What is the ROI of Social Media? Part I
(This ended up being very long, I broke it into two parts so it is easier to digest.)
It seems like the ROI debate around social media is continuous. The more and more this industry evolves the more and more answers to that question change. Some people say that you can’t really measure the ROI on any of this and if someone tells you they can it is BS. Others will tell you that some of this can be measured but most of it can’t be. (Some people just don’t know how to measure .) Then there are people who I see eye to eye with and well tell you that if you set goals, think about how you can measure them, and work your strategy around these metrics you can measure the ROI with some effort. (I must say that Amber’s post completely inspired this.)
Before I go into this I want to say that the strategy and measurement that I am doing for this client probably won’t work for 75% of the businesses out there. Their goals, their business model, and how they execute their social media is probably different from the way you do. THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD BE. Each business is different and their goals, execution, and how you track the results are going to be all over the map. There isn’t a cookie cutter approach to this and I think that is where a lot of the frustration lies. My goal with this post is to show you the thought process behind setting goals, breaking those goals down, and how we track them. Because this company is set up a certain way it makes breaking this down very easy, I have clients where this answer is much more complex but I figure this is about the process. (This is really written for a 101 level.)
Also this isn’t even taking into account other forms of traffic including search engine traffic, Jason Falls has a great post about that.
The Company
I am not going to name the client but they are a bootstrapped startup that is basically using social media as their main marketing until they can afford to use other marketing channels and have more of a complete marketing blend. They sell goods through a private shopping website much like the Gilt Groupe, so all of their business is done online. (Which I know is an advantage over brick and mortar when tracking all this data; again I wanted to make this simple.)
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