Every social media marketer needs to keep track of and analyse their social media ROI. Social media ROI shows the social campaign value in dollars or euros. Today, we will show you how to double the performance that works and stop those that don’t.
Today, social media marketing strategy is used to escalate brand awareness and even ROI. Its importance has been increasing because social commerce and shoppable posts are becoming more and more common in consumers’ daily life. According to a study, 44% of social media users purchase later after discovering a product, while 11% buy instantly.
What’s social media ROI?
It is a value associated with your social media activities that are divided by your investment in it.
Formula to calculate social media ROI = [total of Return – Investment made] ÷ investment made x 100. If the ROI value is more than 0% then you are making a profit but anything below means you are incurring losses.
How to analyse social media ROI?
It will depend on your business goals and chosen metrics. You can use Google Analytics to measure your social media ROI performance. Your social media goals can be anything like building brand awareness, generating leads, creating new followers, increasing conversions, boosting CTRs, etc. you need to create ROI metrics, accordingly.
Common metrics for social media ROI analysis
- Engagement is a valuable metric that marketers use to gauge social media ROI performance. It reveals how users interact with your brand and content. Engagement metrics can be sub-categorised into shares, likes, clicks, and brand mentions.
- Reach metric is about who is interested in your social media post and how they interact. It is about the size and shares associated with your social media video or post. And how it is seen. It is difficult to measure but is a crucial tracking metric.
- Social media plays a vital role in lead generation, so it is essential to know which channel and content generate leads and drives traffic. Knowing your lead counts help to detect performance.
- Conversion metric is also crucial because you put a lot of effort and resources into your social media campaign. You need to find out your conversion level. Add UTM parameters to links to track clicks.
You will need to set up a system to keep track of your social media ROI. Facebook offers Meta Pixel which offers an insight into your audience flow and interaction with FB ads. You can alson gain insights of your FB user’s behaviour after clicking on the ad. Facebook pixel allows you to understand conversion, target receptive audiences, remarket, build lookalike audiences, and refine the Facebook marketing strategy.
Regularly monitor the metric or have an automated report mailed to your inbox. You can share the social media ROI reports with your eligible stakeholders. It will reveal how your Social Media Marketing campaign impacts the bottom line.
Determine a social media ROI analysis budget
Calculating social media ROI is crucial but you will need some dollars to create and implement it. Some of the spends include –
- Time & effort
- Tools & applications to invest in
- Social ad spend
- Content creation [hire an external content writer or video creator]
How to Improve Social Media ROI?
Now that we have analysed our social media performance and identified several opportunities for improvement, what should be our next course of action?
Recodnise your audience
For social media and ROI success, it is necessary to get to know your target audience better. Ensure to identify the audience interacting with you and on what social channels, so you can create more engaging content, accordingly. You can choose to identify your buyer’s personas and get them to know more.
Create content wisely
Grabbing attention on social media channels amongst the chaos is hard. To cut through the noise make sure to create quality content. It is the quality that works in the end and not quantity. Create entertaining, exciting, and relevant content to grab attention.
Test & Optimise
Experiment with your social media ads with different formats and different audience segments. You can tweak a lot of elements to see which one gives a better result. For example, you are launching two new products. Use video view and reach objectives to test and tweak until you see a lift in your sales.
Experts have even tested adding links to their Bio on Twitter and Instagram posts but they found that their captions without links performed the best. Understand the strategy that works best for your social audience to enhance your ROI. Never cross-post content without tweaking it to the specs and requirements of every social media channel.
Create impressive social media profiles
Your social media profile is often the first thing people see when they visit your account. Therefore, it’s important to create an impressive profile by using optimised content and images on every platform. This will help you make a great first impression and effectively communicate your brand message to your audience.
Collaborate with influencers
Influencers hold significant power across various social media platforms. This power can be harnessed by marketers to increase brand awareness and generate leads. To achieve this, it is important for marketers to identify an influencer whose niche aligns with their brand and target audience. By partnering with the right influencer, marketers can leverage their credibility and reach to effectively promote their products or services and connect with potential customers. This can lead to increased engagement, conversions, and ultimately, business growth.
Social listening
Social media fluctuates. So, keep an eye on consumer needs and behavioural changes in social media consumption. You will get an idea of where to invest your money and time by checking the up-to-date social media trends online. Social listening is crucial to know what is occurring in your niche.
Widen audience reach with a press release
To expand the reach of your Social Media Marketing campaign, it can be beneficial to connect with media outlets. You can inform them about your campaign by uploading press releases or tagging them in your social media posts. This can increase the likelihood of getting mentioned in media stories or obtaining backlinks to your website. To track your media performance, consider using the “media mileage” metric as an analysis tool. By doing so, you can gain insights into the effectiveness of your media outreach efforts and make any necessary adjustments to optimise your campaign’s performance.
Last but not the least...
It’s important not to chase ROI recklessly, as it can cause you to lose sight of the bigger picture. Focusing solely on returns on investment can make you forget the uniqueness and value of your brand. Trying to capitalise on trends just to receive comments or likes may not be worthwhile if it ultimately frustrates your target audience or goes against your brand voice.
In the long run, this approach can damage your brand’s reputation. Instead, keep in mind the larger goal of social media ROI, which is to enhance customer satisfaction and strengthen relationships with your audience. By prioritising these factors, you can achieve sustainable success on social media.