The impact of social media on our day to day life cannot be understated. It is playing a significant role in almost every aspect of modern life. Right from consuming news to doing business everything can be done on social media platforms. Mainly on the business aspect, Social Media is helping brands build their online visibility and push their sales to funnel. And one of the most efficient ways of carrying out business online is through a social media marketing campaign. Let’s look at the most obvious benefits of social media marketing campaigns:
- It builds brand awareness
- It can be cost-effective
- Helps to engage with targeted customers
- Easy to spread and share
- Build brand authority and trustworthiness
- Improve SEO rankings
- Brings measurable results
Well, these were just some of the benefits a well-planned social media marketing campaign could bring in. However, many experts that come up with great marketing campaigns find measuring its ROI (Return on Investment) challenging. Statistics also say that last year, 28% of marketing agency said they were struggling to get quantifying data of their social media/digital marketing campaign, 55% said they could measure it somewhat, and 17% were accurate in providing accurate data. While, 55% of social marketers in 2018 said, measuring ROI on their campaign was the top challenge. Measuring and analysis are crucial because only when the performance of a campaign is tracked it can further improvise on what works and what needs to be discarded. So, for people that are fighting to get accurate data here are 10 tangible ways of measuring the ROI of your social media marketing campaign:
10 Tangible Ways Of Measuring The ROI Of Your Social Media Marketing Campaign
1. Setup Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Identifying the key performance indicator (KPIs) is your first step of measuring the ROI of your social media marketing campaign.
Some of your social media campaign KPIs might include:
- Increase brand awareness – for example – Increase 50% reach on Facebook in 2 months and increase 20% brand mentions on Twitter.
- Attract website traffic – for example – Increase traffic to newly added products from Instagram by 40% in the first quarter.
- Generate fresh leads – for example – Gain 300 new leads from Facebook and 100 from Twitter during the “Joy of Giving” campaign.
- Generate X number of sales – for example – Increase sales by 10% on baby products during the campaign run time.
- Rank high on Search Engines – for example – Rank on the first page of Google for “Cartoon Tshirt for Women” keyword during the campaign.
Unless you set up your KPIs and define goals, you will possibly not know what and how to measure your ROI and what exactly you want to measure. So, ensure that as a first step you set your goals and see how you want to grow in social media.
2. Scale Current Measurement
Now, this is interesting to note that most companies do not consider what their current benchmark measurements are. This is however very important for comparing the return on investment now and later. Here is something you can do:
- Track website analytics including visitors, SEO rankings, backlinks, etc.
- Note down customer satisfaction score or customer rating on social media.
- Record current KPIs you are tracking including marketing and advertising budget, sales per month, investment costs.
- Note the number of existing followers, fans, connections, etc. on various social media channels.
Having such information handy will help you see changes in your social media efforts over time. So, before you start measuring your ROI scale your current measurements.
3. Understand the ROI Equation
The next step is to understand the ROI equation. Here, social media experts have derived an equation that helps you measures your social media’s return on investment. The typical equation used is revenue divided by investment multiplied by hundred gives you your percent of ROI.
Revenue/Investment X 100 = ROI.
Here your Revenue is what you have made from social media. Investment means the investment in terms of ads generated, people invested in creating and floating it and so on. So, it is quite simple, if you make $2000 in revenue from your social media campaign on an investment of $1000, your point profit is $1000. Your return on investment here becomes 100%.
However, please remember that there are other formulas and there could be other ways to figure out how well your social media marketing campaign is working; but know that you must stay away from cosmetic shows of them.
4. Configure URLs Builder and UTM Codes
If you want actionable data, you have to have both a Google Campaign URL Builder and UTM Tracking codes embedded. URL builder is a web interface designed by Google that helps to add campaign parameters to URLs in order to track the campaign using Google Analytics. UTM (Urchin Traffic Monitor) tracking is a snippet code that can be added to the end of URL for tracking the performance of social media campaign.
Example of UTM code:
http://mywebsite.com/my-post-title/?utm_source=google
UTM codes can are effective in tracking 5 parameters – Traffic source, Medium, Campaign name, Content and Keyword Term. But, when tracking multiple variables the UTM code can become long and complex. To solve this issue, there is a button added to Google’s URL builder to shorten these long links using Bitly.
Benefits of adding UTM codes:
- Know where the traffic is coming from
- Know the links which are clicked most in the campaign
- Group traffic by medium and measure traffic over time
- Track multiple campaigns
5. Must Include Google Analytics Campaign Tracking
Analytics is usually applied to business data in order to explain, calculate and improve business performance. Google Analytics is an excellent source of website metrics and analytical tool available to track sales and measure conversations. Google Analytics Campaign Tracking can help you track vital stats and information.
Benefits of Using Google Analytics:
- The tool is free to use and easy to set up (configuration documentation available)
- Helps you analyze the source of traffic and provides detailed information about the visitors – their location, surfing pattern, etc.
- You can locate the most popular or frequently visited page using Google Analytics.
- Know the various sources of traffic such as desktop, mobile, or tablet and their retention time.
- Google Analytics further provides email reports, mobile stats, social reporting, outbound links, etc.
- Get a detailed report on the traffic your campaign drove, conversion it achieves and revenue it generated.
There is a lot more this tool can offer, so play around and make the best use of Google Analytics.
6. Incorporate CRM Forms
Having a customer relationship management (CRM) forms can help your campaign with a range of information. Typical work of CRM form is to offer you with dashboards, analytical reports and query facilities to help you understand the campaign operation better. With CRM you can track the activity of your marketing cycle and know where there is strong or weak performance.
This also gives you an idea on how to build and manage the campaign activities further. Apart from this, CRM forms also grow your customer base and improve cross-selling and up-selling opportunities.
7. Integrate Phone Tracking
By integrating a phone tracking system in your social media campaign, you will have prospects calling you instead of filling the given web forms. Tools like Zapier can help you set up Zap that creates or updates a contact record in your CRM which automates lead source tracking through phone calls. This usually works great from a larger campaign, because it could expensive for smaller ones. There is a monthly charge along with the extra fee for every call received from these tracking numbers.
8. Monitor Audience Growth
The total number of fans, followers, and likes on your campaign directly represents the number of unique people interested in your product/service. Your audiences are bound to grow if you are engaging with them in innovative ways. On Facebook, you can just get a detailed analysis of the numbers of likes using the Insight tab on your page.
Moreover, you can also track mentions on Facebook whenever someone tags your business/username in their post via notification. Likewise, Twitter account page can monitor and display the statistics related to your follower count.
9. Figure out Campaign Reach
Determining reach metrics is very crucial. Because when people engage in your campaign they usually spread the word through their connections, which increases the campaign’s reach. Reach metrics helps you locate both how many people you have reached within and outside your audience. Again Facebook’s Insight tab has a Reach option that displays the number of people saw your posts. On Twitter, a number of impression for each tweet can be seen using Impression column under Tweet tab.
You should keep track of the following:
- Organic Reach – Impressions achieved through tagging or @mentioning the campaign posts.
- Audience growth rate – This is the percentage of growth in the number of audiences. It can be scaled on a weekly or \monthly basis.
- Engagement – The equation used to measure engagement is:
(Likes + Comment) / No. Of Followers – Average Engagement rate.
10. Get the Best Social Media Analytical Tools
Of course, there are some interesting tools that can help you track down the ROI on a campaign without much hassle. If you are new in the market, then it is better you play with some of the free social media monitoring tools available and then moves on to paid ones. Some of the best free social media analytical tools include – Facebook Insights, Tweriod, Hootsuite, Social Mention, and Buffer.
Conclusion
Remember, measuring the ROI is the key to knowing the level of success obtained from your campaign through various social media channels. Make use of these soft metrics and bring in massive difference to your marketing efforts on social media. These metrics will enable you to accurately measure and determine the ROI from a social media campaign. Moreover, you will be able to make a more informed and strategic decision on the investment side. So, what helps you track your social metrics? Let us know!