ROI of Social Media: How to Improve the Return on Your Social Marketing Investment

PREFACE

As recently as early 2010, many social marketers would have claimed that social media couldn't be measured, it shouldn't be measured or that businesses should be content with the new interpersonal engagement provided by social media, regardless of cost. It's easy to draw comparisons to the 80s when computers would enable the paperless office and the 90s when the Internet would make bricks and mortar commerce obsolete. Predictably this has changed and many marketers are seeing the need to measure their success in social media because costs need to be accounted for, and incremental earnings are what really matters. Social media is not just about engaging potential customers, but it is about promoting the brand to drive increased revenue, profit, brand and market share with an acceptable level of cost and risk. Over the past few months, a few good books have been published that talk about social media and social media metrics, but they only tell a partial story. The complete story is that in order to determine whether social media is driving incremental sales volume and earnings, it must be considered a part of the entire marketing mix. Social media marketing can only be measured in the context of the entire marketing mix, including both traditional and social media. With that in mind, we need to understand what the drivers of value are for a brand and how a message in social media differs from, or is similar to, a message in traditional media. With that in mind, we have developed ...