The ROI Of Social Media Today

20 Dec, 2013

Comments: 0

In the past marketing efforts meant one to one communication, door to door sales, customized personal messages etc. To calculate ROI was an easy task, you would just have to divide your returns by the investment you made and voila…. You know your ROI!

Enter social media……

This revolution altered the manner in which successful small business owners interact with the market and reach out to their potential customers.

Why should you start using social media today for your small business?

Have you ever thought how Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest can benefit your small business?

Is it time to embrace social media today? Is it worth the time and effort? Will it generate a fantastic ROI?

Here are some benefits that will show you how starting to use social media today can explode your business and why you should be investing in it:

Increase in website traffic: You could use social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook to increase the traffic to your site. You have the opportunity to interact with thousands of potential customers every day. An interesting post from your business could lead a person to your website and potentially convert him into a customer – scrolling through your pages, looking at your product catalogue, ordering some of them and may be recommending the link to another friend!

Building your brand: Large organizations spend millions of dollars on branding initiatives. As a small business, all you have to do is to create a visible brand for yourself over social media platforms – work on your online presence, be yourself, post as frequently as you can, engage with your customers, respond to them, enhance your brand! Work on the TRUST factor!!! For example, In 2010, Dr. Hickey took over the Southport Road Dental Clinic located in Chorley, Lancashire. Until that time, the clinic was not using any social media practices. Dr. Hickey posted a few videos on the YouTube, where potential clients could hear about experiences of the previous clients and see Dr. Hickey. This helped them in establishing the trust factor and increasing patient footfall.

Rewarding your customers: Take an example of a day when you do not have enough customers in your store. How about a discount announcement through Facebook? You could announce a discount coupon for the first ten customers visiting your store within a particular time frame; the next ten can get some additional shopping points! You could even provide a password to a first few customers who can get a discount through your online shopping catalogue.

Creating the hype: Sometimes, small business owners want to visit a trade show in order to display their product and generate some leads. The social media can act as an important medium to create the pre-event hype. Try running a quiz contest and rewarding the winners through some freebies when they visit your booth in the trade fair.

Providing access to a global audience and customers from Geo Location: Through an effective social media strategy, you get access to millions of social media users every day. You could use specific apps and track your followers within your location, post which you could encourage them to visit your store.

Connecting with other businesses: Through your social media strategy, you could gain access to similar businesses, business owners, potential clients and partners. You could actually develop that competitive edge by gaining insight into what your future clients want, engaging with potential partners and further enhancing your product or service.

Do you have the time for using social media today?

Sometimes it becomes difficult to carve out time during the peak traffic hours.

The beauty of social media lies in its accessibility. Spend as much time as you want to, whenever you want to! Your ability to communicate real-time can help you in creating a great online presence.

Facebook alone has a huge potential to increase your website traffic. Greater traffic means greater chances of conversions, implying greater sales: a perfect business case for spending time on social media!

Take a look at the level of engagement and reach I can create on my Facebook page. Would the reach of over 220,000 people from one post help your business? Just this one post reached 229,000 people and was liked by over 3000 people and shared by over a 1000. Of course, learning how to achieve these results does take some time, but its well worth investing time to do this. The beauty of this also is that in many cases (like this one) the cost of advertising was free!

Howies is a UK clothing company concentrating on active wear. They have given their brand a real character by making ensuring visitors get to know the individuals working for the company. Their blog is regularly updated; the content on their website is engaging and packed. The blog talks about product updates, t-shirt of the month etc. There is hardly a social media platform Howies does not have presence on.

Their complete understanding of the landscape of social media platform has not only helped them build an external community but also retain traffic on their own website by creating an experience that will help them generate greater sales.

The actual ROI

The metrics that you would use to measure the success of your social media initiative will totally depend on your objectives. Some examples could be:

Increase in brand awareness
Converting leads into sales
Driving traffic to your website
Gathering customer feedback
Gathering competitive intelligence
Reducing the cost to serve etc.

You should apply the SMART (Specific, Measureable, Actionable, Realistic and Timely) methodology to your social media strategy.

Before you start measuring the metrics, consider posting some authentic content on the channels that you feel can drive maximum traffic to your website. Try and engage your followers; greater engagement will lead to greater followers which might lead to greater sales.

A number of free analytics tools such as Google Analytics, MOZ Analytics (free for 30 days) and KISS Metrics (free for 14 days) are available to help you measure and track your impact.

Where do you start?

Aim at starting small and creating an engaging list of followers first. Create an interaction plan/ social media calendar for your service – it could be a basic once-a-week interaction to start with. Ensure that your content is meaningful and is generating interest. Do not ignore your followers, instead, engage with them. Reinvent your strategy, if and when required.

Remember, it is all about relationships! You have to be generous and interested in other people, committed to investing the requisite time and effort and it will definitely pay off!