How to Prove Your Social Media Efforts Affect Business Goals

May 3, 2016

Social media programs are consuming a greater share of marketing budgets. How much incremental business will the resources dedicated to social media generate for your company? 70% of CMOs cannot answer this question. Paradoxically, CEOs depend on their marketing teams more so than ever, as marketing becomes an increasingly critical lever for achieving top-line growth.


So how do you tie social media marketing success against key performance indicators such as revenue growth and profit? Here are three ways that you can prove your social media efforts affect your bottom line.


1. Traffic From Social


Think of social media as a giant focus group. It’s easy to assess what resonates with your customers based on how they engage with your posts. The insights that you learn from your most loyal customers can immediately impact your business strategy. When you identify a post on social media that resonates with your customers, think about re-using it on your other marketing channels. It probably will perform well for a second time.


2. Conversion Rate


It’s likely that you already use Google Analytics to assess your social media traffic. If you’re a savvy marketer, you’re well aware of your bounce rate, average session duration, and conversion rate from social media channels. But you can get more granular. Can you tell which Instagram photo lead to the most sales of the product featured in the photo? When you can attach an exact dollar amount to each brand tweet, Instagram, and Facebook post—you’re doing social media right.


3. Decrease in Content Costs


Sometimes your profit is what you save. Creativity is in greater demand than ever. Brands are struggling to avoid content fatigue while maintaining an active presence across multiple social channels. So how can social media efforts help you scale content creation at a lower cost? Customers are already posting high-quality photos about the brands and products that they love. With their permission, you can unlock a giant pool of crowd-sourced, authentic content to re-use across future marketing initiatives.


There’s so much more to social than counting likes, hashtags, and followers. Next time your CMO says it’s hard to measure social media ROI, bring a solution to the table- let him or her know that there is a way to prove the quantitative impact of your social media efforts on your business. Today, high-performing marketing leads don’t just align their department’s activities with business strategy; they actively engage in shaping it.

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