HEY, social media marketers, are you doing your job? How do you measure the effectiveness of your services to your clients? Hours billed vs. profit gained? Sure, but measuring ROI is often a tricky game. Do you take the client’s sales reports and compare them to the activity you’ve (hopefully) documented for every campaign, or do you have a tracking mechanism that works within their e-commerce workflow?
Measurement is Important
All of the above questions are those that should be asked when embarking on a serious social media marketing campaign. Unfortunately, many clients have yet to understand how to ask that question when it comes to accurately partnering with social media marketing (SMM) companies / consultants. Without actual conversion measurement, how do you – how does the client – know that there is actual gain on the investment (ROI)?
The formula is simple…
- Cooperatively, you and the client decide the target / goals for the campaign.
- The client commits to a budget that will allow for the campaign to be realized.
- You invest your time, materials and intellectual property into developing and executing the campaign.
- Cooperatively, you and the client evaluate the gain vs. the cost of the campaign.
- This all results the actual return on the client’s investment(ROI) into the campaign.
SIMPLE!
Create Measurable Social Media Marketing Campaigns
When we pitch a client a social media marketing campaign, we assure them that all activities, all action taken on behalf of driving SALES to the customer’s website will be measured and, thus, reported for success (or failure). One simple technique that we use at CreateWOW is taking full advantage of Google Analytics’ e-Ccommerce reporting. It’s simple to engage and spectacular for tracking sales conversions.
At a base level, Google Analytics is a great tool and should be used by ANY marketing campaign. If the analytics illustrate an increase in traffic during a specific campaign window, Great! You made more people go to the website, but what a truly measurable marketing campaign needs is the MEASUREMENT OF CONVERSIONS to sales (or subscriptions, appointments, whatever the end goal may be).
To the right you can see a snapshot of an analytics chart that we supplied to our client after a VERY successful campaign. As the chart illustrates quite dynamically (I Love Charts) the campaign we developed to drive sales just before Christmas was a monster success. The numbers even surprised us ab it, but as you can see, the sales conversion form December 11th took a HUGE leap to 27.58% conversion versus an average of 5% to 8% the previous year.
Simply stated, we were able to go back to the client and say,
“Because of your social media marketing efforts, on the 11th of December, you experienced a 500%+ increase in e-commerce conversions over last year.”
Guessing in Social Media Marketing Is Over
As an entrepreneur or business owner, would you EVER invest on a venture that “Should, Might, Can,” or any other passive measurement scale your bottom line? I think not.
As social media marketers, the use of these tools is imperative. Being able to defend your work, support your client and drive your collaborative success is the ONLY way to stay in the game.
***
So, with that, I close with a Happy New Year. And here’s to a measurably improved 2012!
Keep Cooking!
Andrew B. Clark
The Brand Chef
