Last Updated on November 2, 2022 by Arif Chowdhury
You should be aware of ROI from your marketing activities, including your investment in social media advertising as a company owner. You also have a right to know about the complexity of social media analytics and return on investment. However, do you know the relevant metrics for tracking ROI on social media?
Thousands of company owners want to know about social media ROI tracking metrics.
They often approach social media marketers with the attitude, “I am not interested in anything else; I want to make a profit right away; I need to succeed in achieving my target leads, sales, and profit margin.”
However, think about how you acquire clients in the actual world.
Most consumers must go through a conventional marketing funnel due to human nature. What’s more, guess what? It’s no different on the internet.
Social media directly impacts the customer’s buying decision but can’t change human behavior. Before making a purchase, potential consumers must experience each stage of your sales cycle.
You have to remember this; Social media is not a tool to change everything. I have seen many friends keep liking and sharing a post from a different brand, yet they never made a single purchase. People reduce the number of calls they make. They have ceased to network. They stop putting in the effort because they believe social media will do everything for them. It isn’t the case.
Do you know your social media marketing campaign would deteriorate after a while, leading you to believe that it is because of a social media marketing campaign that failed, while it was other factors?
So, in this guide, I will show you – how to measure social media effectiveness by utilizing relevant metrics.
What is the difference between traditional and Social ROI?
Social media metrics are like, share, comments, and click-through rates, also called social media engagements.
To calculate social media marketing ROI, consider the following phases in a typical marketing funnel’s purchase process:
- Mass awareness among the targeted customer
- Attract clients through reasoning
- Customer buying intent
- Product evaluation
- Convert customers and encourage them to buy a product
For the sake of demonstrating the social media purchasing process, we’ve modified the standard funnel a little:
- Mass awareness among the targeted customer
- Attract clients through emotions (customers buy with feelings)
- Customer buying intent
- Convert customers and encourage them to buy a product
- Nurture to produce loyal customers (recurring clients)
- Provide flexible support
Different criteria are used to measure the ROI at each phase. Below are the steps and related KPIs and several consumer behaviors to assist you in enhancing your social media marketing ROI by implementing innovative measures in each purchasing stage.
Remember one thing: a random potential client might come across your business page at any point throughout their product search. They could find out about you because one of their buddies commented on your social post. They may check your social media posts and see how many positive reviews you received might be the deciding factor in getting them to purchase your product.
Quick Note: You may also use Google Analytics to measure your social media ROI. Such as how many clicks you are receiving or how many sales are generating through social channels. Remember that your social media performance is directly related to your business goals.
So, how to evaluate social media campaigns? First, follow the below step-by-step guidelines.
Recommended Reading: How Do Beginners Start Social Media Marketing? (Definitive Guide)
Step 1: Track how many audiences are seeing your content.
Are your potential consumers even aware that your brand exists on social media? Or are they even knowing that you are offering their favorite product or service?
New page likes (followers), post or page impressions, posts or product reach, and your product video views are all factors that lead to brand recognition on social media.
Let’s look at those two concepts in more detail: how many impressions you receive and your potential reach.
The amount of times your page or post is showcased in someone’s timeline is referred to as impressions. The same person may be reading your posts several times on Facebook.
The number of unique social users who see your post — including your followers and general social users who link to your followers and those who aren’t following you — is referred to as reach.
What is the intelligent technique to spread the word?
To gain more followers, start a page marketing campaign.
When they arrive at your page, try to impress them at the very first look. Try to craft engaging content that promotes your brand, products, and services. Thus, it helps to attract these new but potential clients.
Increase the number of people who view your posts by boosting them. If you enhance your brand products, your followers and those who connect with them will see it.
Step 2: Track how the audience is reacting to your content.
Do potential consumers care about your brand, product, or service while seeing it on their newsfeeds? Do you manage to grab their interest?
Your social ROI is the number of direct conversations you receive multiplied by the number of people engaging with your content.
It is called the best engagement from your customer when they send you an inquiry about your brand or product.
Your engagement numbers are determined by how earnest their inquiry is and how much they are interested in learning more about your brand, product, or service. Excellent engagement should be like this:
Once you publish content, you receive a bunch of social engagement, i.e., likes, shares, comments, and a visit to your links. The more attention you have, the better your content is performing. An engaging post can attract hundreds to thousands of engaging audiences from people interested in your business.
Your product should be locally available, fascinating, informative, humorous, or a mix of those traits to attract this audience. It should also be promoted to increase the reach of your content.
A high rate of audience engagement is essential. Your post-engagement rate is calculated by dividing the total engagements by the impressions it receives. Because it stimulates involvement, quality posts, as mentioned above, can quickly generate engagement from the audience.
How to stimulate people’s attention?
Create content that is both entertaining and informative. In addition, you should create content that can raise awareness of your brand products or service and offer consumers something valuable, thus, encouraging them to return.
The contrast between a custom and a readymade product from a company is the finest example of what “highly engaging content” looks like. Which one do you think you’ll end up interacting with? A custom-made product from a brand is far more appealing to most people than a regular readymade product readily available from almost anywhere.
Step 3: Track how many external site visits are done from your content.
You’ve fascinated them with your brand product or service, and now they want to know more about it.
Here social ROI is how many of your audience visited your product or service by clicking on the post link.
What can you do to make a difference?
Craft a highly engaging and attractive landing page for your product or service, then share it with your content.
Remember to add a CTA button, such as call us, shop now, or any other CTA button. In addition, with CTA advertisements that may assist lead generation, Facebook offers various possibilities.
You may launch a lead-generation advertising campaign on Facebook.
Quick Note: To measure your brand awareness, you must look for social listening metrics. The more people are talking about your brand, the more effective your marketing campaign, and your sale conversion will also increase.
Someone has heard of you, read your evaluations, admires your business products and services, and is interested in learning more about you.
But wait, how can you keep track of transactions made via social media? For example, is a special deal or coupon available exclusively on Facebook or other social media platforms? Do you inquire and keep track of where your clients discovered you in an orderly manner, and if this is the case, how do you track those sales or leads?
Here your social ROI is a track using a unique code.
Conduct a Facebook promotion using a PLU code; thus, you can trace any online or POS systems payment process.
It is time to boost your sales by using social media ads.
Step 5: Track the customer retention rate.
Just as critical as acquiring new clients, keeping current ones pleased and returning for more is challenging. According to customer retention theory, “80% of your revenues will generate from 20% of your present consumers.” Thus it implies that the cash streams you’ve been looking for are suitable in front of you and need your complete nourishment and cultivation.”
This Social ROI is measured in regular online reviews from existing clients and how much active social media followers have.
How to get loyal customers?
Monitor and reply to your customer reviews. Each review, whether favorable or adverse, should receive a response.
Create exclusive deals and offers for your existing clients.
Step 6: Track how famous your brand is among the targeted audience.
There’s a distinction between a client and a passionate follower. If they do not purchase your product, you want them to help you spread your brand name to their friends and family. It’s called free social media awareness. On the other hand, those loyal followers you’ve been cultivating might become your most ardent supporters.
This social ROI is social sharing, hashtag mentions, and discussing your brand helps to connect to your business around the target community.
What should be your plan to receive support from your loyal followers and clients:
You may design your brand’s supporting campaign and connect it with influencers for even more effect. It is where social media marketing ROI truly shines since you have renowned influencers, loyal clients, and followers assisting you at every stage of your marketing campaign.
Recommended Reading: How Often Should You Conduct a Social Media Audit? (Definitive Guide)
9 Essential Social Media ROI Statistics.
Now let us talk about some key statistics of social media ROI that you should be aware of.
- 56% of social media marketers realize after a certain period that they need help to track their revenue correctly.
- 58% of business owners think social engagement is the ultimate success, and they calculate their ROI based on likes and shares.
- 21% of social marketers measure their ROI based on conversion.
- 16% of marketers measure mass awareness by how many shares they get.
- 2% of marketers focus on their customer service.
- The most popular metric to track success in social media marketing is how many clicks and site visits they get, how much reach or impression they receive, and the conversion rate.
- By 2023 experts predicted that the social media marketing budget would double.
- On average, $20 is spent on a Facebook commercial post.
- On average, $65 is spent on every referral sale on Instagram. At the same time, this number is around $10 on Facebook and $19 on Twitter.
How Do You Improve Your Social Media ROI?
Any brand or business usually wants to increase its social media ROI. The problem is figuring out how to get there.
Social media marketing optimization is the first step in increasing your revenue. It means investing your advertising budget efficiently to obtain the best results. Here’s how to make better use of your marketing budget on the social platform:
Stay away from your instincts when picking content to promote on social media or investing funds in advertising. Instead, be economical with your spending. Keep track of success using your preferred social media management software, and invest only in posts with the most potential to produce results.
Publish your posts when your target audiences are most active on social media, which is when they are online. You’ll increase your chances of receiving responses and can efficiently use the resources you’ve invested in generating content this way.
Investigate the content that your rivals are advertising and how well they are doing. Then, make intelligent tactical judgments about which content you should focus on to stay ahead of your competitors.
Conclusion.
Before I wrap up this guide, I hope you learn the relevant metrics for tracking ROI on social media.
Social media returns on investment (ROI) are calculated based on all sales cycle stages. Therefore, to ensure all the components are functioning and contributing to your intended outcomes, you must grasp all the layers of the funnel.
To achieve success, you must increase your performance in the targeted metrics I have shown you in this guide. Focus on the critical metric all the time based on your social media marketing goal. And always focus on customer retention rate because your loyal customer is the ultimate key to your continuous revenue stream for now and future.