Market Your Startup

The True ROI of Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing is not FREE! You are investing your time and therefore money in Social Media Marketing, and as any business investments you want to know what Return On Investments you can gain from it? Legitimate question! You should wonder, and you should know, because understanding and learning about the ROI of Social Media Marketing allows you to use it efficiently and really promote your business in the most effective way. So what is the ROI of Social Media Marketing? Keep reading to find out!

The quick answer: The ROI of Social Media Marketing is what you want it to be. Do you want to focus on better customer service? Or attract side markets to your business? Or may be you want to develop a loyal and trusting relationship with your customer? Well, then concentrate on those numbers. For some  metric examples and numbers on how to measure your Social Media Marketing check the end of the article!

Useful information

One of the first goal of Social Media Marketing is to inform. Your Social Media tools enable you to provide useful information about your business to educate your customers, and inspire potential customers that they need your product or service. The R.O.I. of Social Media Marketing then, is shown by analyzing how many of your current customers you have been able to keep and turn them into a loyal customer base and how many of new potential clients you have been able to turn into real customers. Another goal of Social Media Marketing is to teach your customers how you differ from your competition, explain what makes your product or service unique and the best solution for their problem or need, and also why there is a advantage for them and the rest of the society to follow you. The ROI of Social Media Marketing here is to see how many of your customers have started following you instead of your competitors.

Branding

Social Media Marketing helps your business gain an identity online. You establish a reputation for your business through Social Media tools, which allows targeted readers, customers and other businesses in your industry to recognize your brand, to recognize who you are and what your business represents. On the long term, the loyalty from your customers gained is the ROI of Social Media Marketing efforts. On shorter term, your ROI is the increasing number of customers and potential customers aware of your business existence on the market, and your presence online.

Customer Support and Product/Service Improvement

With Social Media tools you can reach more customers, but most of all you incite them to engage in improving what your business needs to change. You can make them feel involved, create communication and have them generate new ideas for your business – new ideas, innovation, or improvements or product differentiation, all of them will help you to stay ahead of the competition. This helps you understanding the need of your targeted readers and answer those needs the most efficiently possible. The ROI of Social Media Marketing is the feedback you receive from your customers and see how you are able to provide a better response to your customers.

Trust and a Trusting Network

Social Media Marketing has been proven to help businesses create a whole new relationship with their customers and business partners. The customer support ( as describe previously) enabled through the use of such tools enables you to drive a connection between your business and your customers. The constant attention given to your customers and your ability to keep their attention as well, gives your business the great opportunity to create, develop and strengthen a strong trust relationship with your customers. You, therefore, grow your network, on strong basis, for a long term commitment.

The ROI of Social Media Marketing can’t really be measured as a financial result, at least not initially. But it is measured through an analysis of your business, its online presence, the awareness you were able to develop, and quantity and quality of the followers you were able to gain and keep, and the identity you created for your business.

Social Media Marketing ROI Metrics

Here are a couple of numbers and metrics that you should keep an eye on to measure your Social Media Marketing ROI. But always remember to gather these information before you start with your Social Media Campaign, so you can compare the before and after results !

• Search Engine results and website traffic
• Brand recognition
• Customer complaints
• Customer complaints response rate
• Product returns
• Negative comments/positive comments about your company online
• One-time vs. returning customers
• Backlinks
• Time savings (for example, when you refer your customers to helpful blog articles rather than answering them all over and over again!)

These are just a few metrics that will help you determine the profitability of Social Media Marketing, but there are many more. It depends very much on where you want to focus on. Building a Social Media Marketing campaign is more than just setting up a Facebook page and following random people on Twitter. Focusing on specific aspects of Social Media will bring you more targeted results, so establish a strategy first and monitor the results!

Social Media Marketing is a long term process, where data analysis, and not dollars amount, tells you how successful you are.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.