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As the organizations are gradually realizing the importance of social media, they are also increasing the budgets allocated for the same. But increasing budget also means that the marketers cannot do it casually. They must deliver visible and quantifiable results. This is exactly where the question of return of investment comes.
So, how to measure ROI and how to enhance it?
The latter will surely depend on your own creativity and skills but before that you need to get a clearer picture through analytics. Google analytics is of course a good free tool used by everyone. Even Facebook and Twitter offer their own analytics nowadays. It can tell you the amount of traffic generated by your social channels. But for better planning you will need to know more.
So, here are a few additional tools to measure your social ROI and enhance the same. Most of them have free to use features with some advanced paid options....
This growing mass of information and options–often combined with unrelenting interruption marketing–can be overwhelming. When the distracted consumer is the norm and it becomes increasingly harder to separate the signal from the noise, more is often less.
As our customers’ world grows ever noisier our reflexive response is often to dial things up to 11. Resist that urge.
The new battle ground is for share of attention. And we earn and command attention not through shouting louder than everyone else, throwing more at the wall to see what sticks or defaulting to using price as the only arrow in our quiver.
The antidote to a tsunami of stuff is to know more about our customers than the competition and to turn that insight into intensely relevant products and experiences....
Most of the data captured about our everyday transactions isn't very exciting.
However, when you compare all that information across millions of consumers and products and thousands of outlets, you enter the realm of big data, which can reveal previously unknown patterns.
A case in point is outlined in a forthcoming Journal of Marketing Research paper which identifies a segment of customers, dubbed the "harbingers of failure", with an uncanny knack for buying new products that were likely to flop....
Where do you get most of your traffic from?
Is it from Google searches, referrals from other websites, social media or somewhere else?Each form of traffic is relevant and useful.
But…. today, let’s focus on how to increase website traffic from social media....
The distinction between Geoffrey Moore’s “Systems of Record and Systems of Engagement” concepts is a hot topic amongst organizational leaders today. A quick primer, courtesy Wikipedia: Whilst a system of record (SOR) is the authoritative data source for a given data element (e.g. CRM, ERP and supply chain management), systems of engagement (SOE) “focus on people, not processes.” Texting, Twitter,Facebook and other forms of customer communities are cited as examples of the latter.
Whilst the pundits duke it out about what’s more important between the two, entire industries are going through massive and decisive digital transformation. And at the nucleus of this transformation is neither of these but networks of record. Networks of record are definitive market places that foster contextual engagement and commerce amongst buyers and sellers at much higher velocity than the traditional sales models that add extensive friction to the intended customer experience....
A Glimpse Into Marketers' Social Media Strategies - Even the big guys struggle to measure ROI.
92 Percent of marketers say social media is important channel for their businesses, reveals new study from adweek.z
"Almost every company puts much money and effort behind social media strategy, with goals ranging from enhanced brand awareness to direct leads or sales. But while 97 percent of those surveyed said they use some form of social media marketing, only 37 percent reported being able to measure ROI—and this problem extends to even the largest marketers, 78 percent of whom said they struggle with this measurement."
Take a look at this infographic called "A Glimpse Into Marketers' Social Media Strategies" for rest of the findings....
...To be competitive and successful in today’s cutthroat markets, companies must access historical data from previous campaigns, track activities in real time through a campaign, and compare changes in performance and results before embarking on a new campaign in the future. This means making intelligent, data-driven decisions based on in-depth reporting and thorough analysis.
Sound easy? Maybe not, but it can be when marketing teams are equipped with the most up-to-date marketing automation solutions to track, measure, and optimize all leads. But finding the right technology can be challenging.
For example, Google Analytics can provide reports on website activity and PPC performance, while voice-based marketing automation tools can track all phone leads from various initiatives. When marketing automation and analytics solutions are combined, the reports are more detailed and the insights extracted are more valuable. In other words, decision makers will have a much higher marketing IQ....
...53% of Millennials could be following your brand on Twitter with the right incentives. Wink wink.
And that’s not all, according to the report, Millennial women are seven times more likely to retweet your brand and three times as likely to follow your brand on Twitter (and see all those great incentives you’re offering). Men are three times as likely to follow on Twitter as well, but they’re a bit less generous on the retweets.
So, what types of loyalty programs resonate with this rowdy bunch? According to the report, “51% of Millennials said they prefer store loyalty programs that cover multiple brands. 37% said they’re interested in parent brand programs, and only 12% favor loyalty programs at the single brand level.”...
Last year, IBM poured some cold water on social advertising when it said social sites like Twitter and Facebook had almost no impact on online Black Friday sales.
This year, things aren’t much better.In tracking traffic and sales at about 800 e-commerce sites, IBM says it found that only about one percent of visits to e-commerce sites this week come from social networks, according to Jay Henderson, strategy director for IBM. And, once again, just a fraction of one percent of overall orders are made by people coming to the e-commerce site directly from a social network, he said.
“I don’t think the implication is that social isn’t important,” Henderson said earlier this week. “But so far it hasn’t proven effective to driving traffic to the site or directly causing people to convert.”...
Companies that blog generate 67 per cent more leads than those that don’t, 78 per cent of CMO’s think that content marketing is the future of marketing, and next year marketing teams will spend an extraordinary $135 billion on digital marketing collateral.
These are just three of the more fascinating stats contained in an infographic produced by WebDam Solutions, a US based digital asset management company.
B2B firms are natural candidates for inbound marketing and content strategy campaigns. Many entrepreneurs believe that effective inbound marketing efforts require tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of hours, and at least a year to get traction in the marketplace. However, with content marketing, it’s possible to make a significant impact against specific metrics in a short period of time.
Here’s a plan that’s achievable for any content marketer or entrepreneur at a B2B firm. If you’re strategic, you can plan, develop, launch, and begin to reap the benefits of a content marketing campaign in as little as sixty days. Ready to learn how? Read on....
Shift the way you think about content by seeing how it can actually save you time and money in the long run.
Think of content as an investment, if only for the SEO value it will provide. When you create one blog post -- just one day of content creation effort -- it's indexed in search engines forever. If you create one blog post, and create it well, that can drive results for your business in the form of traffic and leads for years and years to come.
So while one hour today may seem impossible, that one hour of work could drive hundreds or thousands of leads in, say, ten years
Talk about ROI.
This concept of creating once, and creating well, should be applied to marketers at any stage -- but none is more critical than marketers undergoing a website redesign. If that's you, now is the ideal time to invest in carefully choosing your page structure, and thoughtfully crafting content to perform well for both readers and search engines. A successful build (or rebuild) will make your website an enduring presence online. A great keyword strategy combined with appropriate content and site structure turns your website into a 24-hour marketing machine for your company!...
The 80-something year-old Hambletonian harness race leveraged social media marketing to infuse new enthusiasm for the race and sport. Jason Falls reviews the Hambletonian Society’s efforts.Last weekend’s Hambletonian gave us an interesting look at social media. Odd that we’re talking about social media and an 87-year-old harness race – a sport most associate with 70-something New Jersey retirees – but that’s kind of the point.
This year, for the first time, the Hambletonian made a focused effort on social media to re-ignite enthusiasm for the event – harness racing’s version of the Kentucky Derby – and even for the sport itself.Leveraging a compelling content marketing effort, blogger and traditional media outreach and social network activity including Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram, the Hambletonian Society established a respectable benchmark in social.
While they were at it, they may have hooked a portion of a vast new audience on harness racing in the process.Instead of getting fed a lot of metrics from the Hambletonian team (I was one of the bloggers they outreached to for help spreading the word about the event), I decided to look at the aftermath from an analyst’s perspective. If their goal was reach and awareness, they did a nice job....
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Lead generation might be a top goal for B2B marketers in 2015, but social media isn’t where they’re expecting to bring in qualified prospects, according to a new BrightTalk report.
In fact, social media and print advertising ranked the lowest on a list of 15 different lead generation tactics. A full 30 percent said these are ineffective lead gen tools and just 12 percent said they’re highly successful. On the contrary, email marketing was cited as the top tool, with 55 respondents saying it’s effective.
In an era when 7 out of 10 people utilize social media (and the average social media user is active 2 hours and 25 minutes daily), this is unsettling data. Marketers who consider social media ineffective for lead gen need to reconsider their current strategies and revamp what they’re doing to both promote the brand and nurture people to take the next step to learn more....
I can’t justify spending more than 6 hours a week on social media—the ROI just isn’t good enough.
And yet, I still utilize social media to drive traffic to my blog posts and guest posts. I just don’t spend more time than necessary.
In this post, I’m going to share with you 6 different ways you can save time on social media so that you can focus on more important parts of your business....
How many benefits of social marketing can you think of?
Social media can be used in so many ways – to develop your brand, increase SEO rankings, distribute content, acquire leads, and more. While many blogs talk about these benefits, there are very few that attempt to outline the “big picture” of social media or a comprehensive list of its benefits.
I decided to take a stab at it and ended up with 75 benefits of social media marketing. Below is an infographic with a compiled list of benefits. Check it out and see which benefits your brand is potentially missing on social media....
Suspicious Web traffic in the U.S. rose 36% sequentially in the third quarter of 2014, and bot traffic grew by 35%. Data released Friday identifies 55% of the traffic on retail sites as suspicious with 34% of traffic confirmed as bot. The data defines "suspicious" as non-human behavior.
U.S. retailers could waste about $4.6 billion of eMarketer's projected $11 billion spent on digital advertising this year on bot traffic fraud, estimates Solve Media. The company's latest Quarterly Bot Traffic Market Advisory focuses on U.S. retailers.
Solve Media CEO Ari Jacoby believes 2015 will become the year of verified human audiences. Media companies are "demanding to purchase only human ad traffic and viewable ads."
Brands waste millions of dollars annually. If Bloomingdale's spends $200 million annual in digital, "we estimate $68 million of that could be wasted on bot traffic," estimates Jacoby.....
In the past few years, social has gone from being a consumer phenomenon to an enterprise opportunity. But many companies are struggling with how to implement strategies and realize ROI from their social investments.
The new IBM Center for Applied Insights study, “Charting the social universe: Social ambitions drive business impact,” found that as many as 74% of social decision makers recognized that a social business uses social technology to foster collaboration among customers, employees and partners, but only 20% felt their companies were truly social.
So how do companies navigate the social journey? The study found that companies adopt social capabilities through five primary social ambitions, or entry points -- distinct clusters of social capabilities aimed at realizing specific business goals....
You'd think there wouldn't be much to say about a baked cinnamon roll with icing on top. But that hasn't stopped this mall chain with 1,181 locations worldwide from turning to Twitter literally every few minutes.
Usually, the news isn't exactly earthshattering, and often it's pun-heavy. (Example: "Glaze all you want at these beautiful buns.") But the food-porn shots help....
Social Media Profile (as of 9/15/14)
Facebook Likes: 1.1 million
Twitter Followers: 63,729
Instagram Followers: 20,765
Lifetime Value (LTV) is one of those metrics that keeps your CEO up a night. It's the estimated revenue that a customer will generate during the entire span of their relationship with your company. It takes into account not only the initial purchase, but also how much a customer is likely to spend in the future as they purchase more products and services from you.
By understanding how much revenue each new customer will generate, you gain valuable insight into how to properly set your marketing budget and how much you should be spending on customer acquisition and customer retention -- all things your CEO will love to see you focus on.
Check out the infographic below, created by KISSmetrics, to learn more about LTV, how you can calculate the lifetime value of your customers, and how you can use that information to optimize your marketing spend....
Use the examples of how these small businesses use Twitter to create a loyal following for your own business.
Small businesses hear all the time how effective content marketing is but often they are resistant to allocating their limited budgets and precious time to it because: 1. Good content takes time to develop; 2. And it doesn’t immediately lead to paying customers.
Even though it’s time-consuming and you won’t see ROI today, content marketing – when done well – can become the driving force in your sales machine for years to come.To help you look at it from different standpoints, I reached out to 6 content strategists with one question: “How can content marketing help small businesses generate leads and drive revenue?”...
Why Social Media & Search Marketing go hand in hand. Taking the example of the Flower & Gifts Industry.
...We believe that Social Media and Search Marketing go hand in hand because Social conversations can lead keyword strategy in a certain direction, and Search keywords can influence Social content strategy. By combining your Search & Social Marketing efforts, you can make sure to provide your audience with the right content, based on what they search for the most and what engages them on Social Media. Today we will take a look at the Flowers & Gifts Industry as an example of Social Media & Search Marketing alignment...
As data gets bigger, more ubiquitous, and more social, you’re right in assuming that at least some of it is important to you and your business. You’re posting regularly and engaged with social media. But are you using it correctly? Getting optimal results for your business? And how, exactly, are you supposed to know?
The trick is to identify specifically what social data is relevant – and to analyze just exactly what that data means. There are a slew of metrics, tools, and services to help you make sense of your business’ social data, as with any other data you’re managing.
As a general rule, seek out rates and more nuanced metrics, avoid overemphasizing simple counts and totals. Here, we highlight five of the most important social media metrics you should be tracking – and they’re not just the usual suspects....
You can choose to be part of the online conversation and contribute to steering it. Or, you can let conversation go on without you, letting others control what is said about your business brand....
So you start your business, you get a website, and sign up for Facebook and maybe one or two other social networks. Your online marketing plans are set, right? No! One thing you forgot is social listening tools…There are now many options – Both free and paid.This is meant as a social listening tools review. Those that will benefit the most are just beginning to calculate winning customers online by connecting the puzzle pieces of their efforts...
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![How Much Are Your Customers Worth? [Infographic] | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it](https://img.scoop.it/mcGzxnxFv98yEpDk2zPwTjl72eJkfbmt4t8yenImKBVvK0kTmF0xjctABnaLJIm9)
How to measure social media ROI and how to enhance it? Here are a few tools for the job.