Measuring the ROI of Social Media

 

Not sure this post added much to the conversation on Social Media ROI. If the title is what was supposed to be answered then this article didn't answer it. (Is it possible to measure social media ROI)

I can measure the ROI of everything you do

I can measure the ROI of everything you do. Everything. It doesn’t matter whether it’s collateral or a multi-million dollar media blitz to launch a new product.[1]

There are three types of companies as it relates to measuring the ROI of Social Media and more generally marketing ROI:

1. Those that measure it as another media channel along with TV and others. They have the numbers and can do the metrics. These are usually larger marketers with larger budgets than can shave off some money to measure their marketing effectiveness and continue to make great strides in how they implement their media mix. They have found a significant ROI on ROI and will continue to use analytics to drive their marketing investments.
2. Those that don’t measure the ROI but CAN afford it. These marketers are averse, for whatever reason (to put it mildly), to sacrifice some money out of their marketing budgets to put it towards measurement and analytics and then be able to make significant strides in their marketing effectiveness, including social media. Many of these companies ask, ‘why should we invest in social when we don’t know the ROI?’ Interestingly, they don’t measure the ROI on any other marketing channel but for some reason want to hold social to a higher standard. Not much more can be said about these folks. They will never gather more than anecdotal evidence on success and will probably always be stuck in the morass of low expectations and low growth.
3. There are marketers that truly want to measure the ROI on Marketing (including social), but their budgets are too small to be able to do an effective, complete job. For these companies, most likely they don’t need to determine the exact ROI of Marketing. What they need is to start gathering good information and data in a regular, concise and consistent fashion so that they can use some simple, yet effective analytic techniques to make significantly better marketing decisions. (If you’d like to know what to start to measure, feel free to reach out.)

So the question is really, which group above do you fall in? Have I left off any groups?

[1] But I didn’t tell you how much it will cost or how long it will take. What’s important is that we want to make significantly better fact-based, data informed strategic and tactical marketing decisions.