Return on investment is of most importance for any activity. Be it a new plant, a new machine, a new products Research and development or an intangible team as advertisement. Quantification makes it easy to convince a client. For a marketing team within a larger organisation or a client-facing agency, being able to quantify growth or returns on a campaign is of course of vital importance when presenting results to upper management or clients – not to mention important to yourself or your team in order to determine whether your campaigns are actually working.
Problems with Measuring Social Media ROI
The point about social media is that it doesn’t cost much. In fact it doesn’t need to cost anything. Just open an account on Facebook or twitter or Orkut or linkedin to name a few and start getting people to know about you online. A successful social media campaign can be something started by you for zero money and expanded upon by your users/customers, or it can be something implemented and maintained by an existing member of staff taking up just minutes of their work day. Just like what I do for my company.
Social media is a marketing tool. Some people believe that social media is not a channel to sell things but it is something that should be used purely to engage with your customers. An extension of ethics – something so core to your business that you should be just “doing it” and not thinking about what you get back from it.
As with all types of promotions, social media benefits are qualitative in nature.
There are many qualitative benefits: among them being
Trust
Brand awareness
Interaction
Passion
Loyalty
