Social Media ROI
| Oct 28, 09 in Marketing, Social Media |  3 Comments |
Christina Warren has an excellent article over on Mashable entitled "HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI." It's a great roundup of the tools available today and chock full of content. Including Oliver Blanchard's Social Media ROI presentation.
It's simply astounding how many social media marketing practitioners take the stance that you can not measure the ROI of social media. It's even more astounding that 84% of social media programs are not measured. I honestly do not think that I have ever undertaken a marketing program that did not have ROI metrics attached. Never, ever. It's appalling.
Why are so many social media consultants/companies/experts so averse to measuring the impact that social media has on business results? Perhaps they don't know how. Perhaps they don't like the results. I really don't know. A notable exception is Chris Brogan. He says something to the effect of "sure I measure ROI, that's why they give me money." Good for him.
The position of most social media types reminds of the time when I did an agency review and the astonishment displayed upon learning that customer revenue generated was the end game measurement of any marketing effort. The agency folks were aghast. Measure sales. As a results of marketing efforts. Good god man what is wrong with you!
Folks if it is marketing, and that's the general classification of many social media programs, you can measure it. Measure it all the way to ROI.
The cat is out of the bag. Refusing to measure ROI will be seen as a conspicuous absence by those who foot the bill in 2010. Not only is social media measurable, it's a bevy of richly diverse metrics that include behavioral, attitudinal, influential and yes, transactional indicators.
Even if analytical marketing is not your cup of tea, social media is measurable in laymen terms. Think of it as the "space between" a revenue event. Simply measure the latency and frequency between customer transactions. Good social media shortens the space between sales, and great conversations create new revenue events. --A basic ROI model is born.
For folks who love the science of marketing, ROI is just the surface. Business intelligence, predictive modeling and customer lifetime value are the next frontier of social media measurement. The future is bright. I've also had the privilege to see what Lance is creating with Socialytics. He's turning his words into action. Know that smart, easy-to-use solutions are near...