Powills: How to Measure Social Media ROI

Can you measure social media ROI? Of course you can. And you should. But you probably aren’t. Or, your agency is using words like “dashboard” and “impressions” and “optimization” that explain absolutely nothing and delay the real response. The challenge with the marketing world, though, is that everyone desperately searches for return on investment – not just in gut or overall growth numbers, but specifics directly tied back to singular initiatives. Again, identifying social media ROI is certainly feasible; however, the greatest results I have seen have come in the form of a robust plan that encapsulates every form of outbound communications: public relations, marketing, advertising, social media, and digital. To identify your social media ROI, you should venture back to the early 2000s and find ways brands measured ROI. When I was editor-in-chief of my college newspaper, our advertisers would measure in coupons redeemed. There was a bagel shop near campus that would place “free bagel with purchase” advertisements in each paper and watch the coupons flood in. I clearly remember having a conversation with the business owner about the ROI of each advertisement in that he needed 100 students to redeem each coupon each week, and, buy an accompanying drink for the purchase to make sense. It was my mission to ensure we hit that mark. And we did. Today, social media ROI is not much different than it used to be. Brands, though, have forgotten how these advertisements of the past behaved and how they were measured – partly because print ads, in the most part, have gone by the wayside. Today, people believe that by posting content and generating likes and impressions, somehow, someway, we should be able to measure an ROI. It doesn’t work that way. The process of measuring ROI is still extremely fundamental. Place an offer, watch the redemptions and determine the ROI. You may think I am making it far too easy to drive sales and determine a social media ROI, but the fact is: it is that easy. To determine your social media ROI, try one or any combination of the below: 1) First, determine your cost. What are you spending on Social Media services and how much more should you be spending? This will be determined by outcomes, but should be constantly measured. If you are handling social media internally, what is your cost how much time do you put against your content and what wins do you secure out of it? 2) Measure with measurable activities. With Pita Pit, we created a battle of the locations in which finalist locations experienced an average sales increase of 40 percent – unheard of in a world where flat is the new up. Was it just the social activity and campaign that drove those sales? Of course not. It was a combination of supporting POP, public relations, advertising and great operations at the unit level. However, that singular campaign could be tied directly to sales. 64 stores averaging 40 percent increases throughout the first quarter of 2013 provided Pita Pit with measureable ROI. 3) Simplify it even more. Measure a Facebook offer. While the word on the street says that offers will soon be gone, for the time being they are there. And, even when they are gone, there are other tricks to present offers. For MOOYAH, we placed an offer that drove more than 10,000 offer claims. This is measurable. This can provide a direct ROI. 4) Take a tough sales day and offer an incentive. For Toppers Pizza*, we created a Toppers Tuesday campaign designed to place a consistent offer on Tuesdays as a drive for the fans on Facebook and Twitter. While the results are only great when the offer is aggressive, it still helps us determine an ROI for the brand on that day. 5) Do a Google search to find brands that are winning with social media. You will probably see McDonalds in this search. Each McDonalds fan spends up to $160 more a year through sales drives, new product promotion, and interactions on Facebook. This number is high, but even if each of your fans, through the magical number of impressions they see from your brand, spend $20 more a year, you can start determining the value of your page. It is important to note that social media is just one piece of the puzzle. It is not the be-all-end-all, but it can be a very steady step toward keeping your super customers happy and engaged. You can determine social media ROI by following the bagel shop rule, or by being a little adventurous in your social media approach.