How to Effectively Measure Your Social Media ROI

When you’re a business owner, how your budget is spent is always at the forefront of your mind. And should you lose focus, there are frequent meetings to discuss financials, profits, necessities, upgrades and the like.

Arguably the most important budget any business owner needs to focus on is the marketing budget. After all, marketing is how you build your company. You have to invest time and money if you want to attract leads, convert sales and increase your brand awareness. And, even more importantly, you have to base it all on a plan with proven results. You wouldn’t just throw money into the wind, so why invest your marketing dollars in ways that don’t make sense?

As technology advances and consumer behavior changes, so does the way companies deliver their message to the masses. It wasn’t too long ago that marketing budgets focused mainly around print, television and radio ads. Nowadays, there are more avenues to add to the mix. Take social media, for example; multiple platforms exist and the amount of users is growing by the day.

The best part? They’re free.

But just because it costs nothing to use these sites, doesn’t mean there’s nothing invested in their use. After all, time is money and if you’re spending any amount of time on a resource, it better make good business sense. This is where your return on investment (or ROI) comes into play.

How do you track your ROI for social media use?
We’re glad you asked.

Know Your Audience

First and foremost, you must do your research. This means you need to know who your target market is and the best places to reach them. Each social media platform hinders to a different type of user, so it’s crucial to make sure you’re using the correct ones.

Plan Your Moves

Next, you have to make a plan. Once you’re familiar with your audience and know which platform(s) they frequent, coming up with a strategic plan is the next course to success. You don’t want to randomly post blogs, videos or surveys without thinking them through first. Come up with a weekly or even monthly posting plan, so you’ll cover various types of content in order to reach the optimal amount of readers.

Also, it’s important to mix up your content. If you opt for daily posts, go with a variety. For example, one day you could post a heartwarming, industry-related article and the next day you could post a coupon for 10% off one of your products.

Track Your Results

And, finally, you must make sure your efforts are working. There are several things you should look for and even more tools available to help you. Run analytical reports on a regular basis to get quantitative results on things like:

Page views
Downloads
Purchases
Signups for emails or newsletters
Conversion Pixels for ads and goals
Overall traffic

Google Analytics, Hootsuite, Social Mention or RazorSocial (to name a few) are user-friendly tools that will effectively measure this activity in order to provide you with a concrete idea of what’s working and how well it’s working.

Although it’s difficult to measure the exact ROI of social media, you can definitely track how much time and money you’re putting into it. Keep track of hours invested, paid ads or media, salary of whomever is in charge of your social media, and your general business overhead. Armed with this information, you can look at your analytical reports and see where your efforts are succeeding and where they might need adjustments.

At Signify Studio, we know how vital having a social media presence is to any business and we understand how to research and track your efforts and their effectiveness. If you need guidance or assistance with your social media marketing, give us a call! We have the education and experience necessary to set you on the right track and our growing list of satisfied clients is our proven track record.