Many try and evaluate the ROI of social media and this is one of the biggest challenges for businesses and agencies alike.
For E-commerce style businesses they can track social media sales by such things as Google Analytics or offering special codes for each of the platforms which can be re-deemed when people make purchases. Other businesses will find it harder to directly link their social media efforts to extra business, unless of course the old fashioned way of ‘where did you see us advertised‘ is adhered to.
For some businesses the power of social media is not necessarily direct sales, but by communicating with existing clients, dealing with client feedback etc.
Social media marketing vs paid for traditional / digital marketing.
The best way to look at this subject is to compare the traffic to your website that each generates. How much would it cost you to buy the same number of social media generated web traffic compared to paid for media results. At the end of the day, the reason for any marketing is to get clients to contact you with a plan to buy your product / service and this is usually done by people being driven to your capture website. How much does a page advert in your local newspaper cost and compare that to the cost to get you a certain number of followers on social media – Which delivers better web traffic results and sales.
As an example:
News paper page advert £500.
1,000 web site visits.
3 sales.
2,000 social media followers £250 in your time / efforts.
400 web site visits (over a period of three months)
3 sales.