Social Media Marketing Workshop Q&A 4: Measuring Social Media ROI

 Your Questions Answered: Q4 Measuring Social Media ROI

Hi Again! Quick recap…When it comes to Social Media Marketing – Emerging Food Brands have some questions. And they brought them to the NewPoint Emerging Food Brands Conference.

Remind me again how we got here? The content of this Measuring Social Media ROI (return on investment) portion (and all program content at our conference) was submitted as questions during registration by the 64 food company/brand attendees.  Our expert presenters then addressed the questions—and more—in their programs. In the coming weeks, we’ll be posting each presentation to the “Intel” section of our website. So check back often!

Question #4 part 1: What is the most cost-effective way to track ROI on your social media efforts?

Back at the beginning of this series, we recommended having a plan. At the onset, developing a plan will help you develop or curate your content to fit your audience. It is only fitting that putting time into a program means you set some goals. So, what are your goals for social media? Sales? Brand Awareness? Followers?

Get Real: Expectations on Measuring Social Media ROI

Track Sales with FaceBook Pixel

If you have an online store tracking your ROI, it gets very direct, very quickly. Shopify, Square and other online storefront platforms follow where every click-through originates. You can track and measure every social media boosted post or ad that links to your storefront. Going one step further, Facebook Pixel—which acts as a web cookie for an ad—will follow the customer from the post to your site and all through the selling experience.

Brand Awareness and the Top of the Sales Funnel

Recent research by Sprout.com, as explained in this Social Media Examiner post, shows that, unless you sell directly to consumers online and are using social media to drive them to your online storefronts, an ROI connection between social media marketing-to-product sales at the

supermarket can be pretty hard to link. The report goes on to show that most consumers are more likely in a “top-of-funnel” sales to use social media “like,” increasing exposure, traffic, and generating leads. All these attributes are readily available in the social platform analytics and measurable. It may not be a direct sale but if developed correctly, has full potential to lead to a sale.

Create, Post, Measure, Adjust and Repeat

Benefits from investing in boosted posts or ads to your key target audience can be two-fold—and both fit neatly in the first layers of the sales funnel:

1. At the very least, you are introducing your brand and increasing brand awareness.
2. You are attaining your primary goal of driving engagement with your brand.

Check the analytics of each investment; tweak the creative to adjust your branded message and try it again. Each social media platform has analytics to help track and measure success. Keep working on the message and let the audience tell you what they like and build on that.

Brand Message: Biggest Picture to Smallest Post

Your brand and the messaging supporting your brand represent a significant investment. It represents what current fans expect and what works hard to draw in new audiences. At NewPoint we have the opportunity to work on larger, multi-regional, integrated marketing campaigns where the branded messaging needs to be consistent across all media: digital to traditional, grassroots to shopper marketing, and everything in between. All of these are trackable and measurable. That is not as easy with the other marketing tactics and methods mentioned.

A branded social media post should encapsulate who you are and who your brand is. It should act as your smallest and most cost-effective Brand Ambassador.

Question #4 part 2: Which Service and Platform is best for delivering analytics or our social presence?

Facebook and other social media platforms have many different levels of analytics tracking a multitude of data. It may be overwhelming for the uninitiated. That is why it is so important to establish goals going in. We recommend keeping it simple at first: impressions, reach, likes, new followers, etc. This will help create a baseline and look for things to build on.

Several social media management platforms services cannot only track analytics from your multiple social media accounts but serve as platforms to consolidate your posting to each account. The prices are typically scalable from free to a fee based on how many social platforms are included. Here are a few:

1. Sendible 
2. Hootsuite
3. SproutSocial
4. SocialPilot
5. Agorapulse
6. SocialOomph

There are different pricing, features, and benefits for each social media management platform so you’ll need to review which best fits your needs, but here’s a hint: try Sendible first, then Hootsuite. Both are very comprehensive and user-friendly.

Once again, here is the “fine print.” We offered these caveats in our Measuring Social Media ROI workshop, and they need to remain a constant as we post our answers to your questions:

• Every brand and company is different: Your social planning may not fit into the formats discussed here. But it helps to look at these guidelines as a starting point.
• Social media marketing is always evolving: It helps to stay dialed in on your chosen social platform analytics as well as trends in posting strategies.
• This post is by no means all you need to know. There are a ton of great resources to draw advice on social media sales. The above are a few questions that food attendees asked for the social media workshop. Here are a few more awesome references for more intel:
  • How to Install and Use the Facebook Pixel: A Guide for Marketers from SocialMediaExaminer.com
  • How to define an actionable social media ROI for your business from Sprout.com
  • 5 Tools to Measure Social Media ROI from SocialMediaExaminer.com
  • 9 Steps to Measure Social Media ROI: a Complete Guide from SocialBakers.com
  • 6 Hootsuite Alternatives You Must Try from Sprout.com
  • The 17 Best Social Media Management Tools [2018 Update] from JeffBullas.com

That’s it for the social media workshop. Here are quick links to the previous workshops:

1. Social Media Posting Strategies
2. Social Media Selling & Coupons
3. Social Media Boosting and Geotargeting

Thank you for joining us! We will be posting more workshops in the coming weeks!

Want to talk social media marketing — maybe walk through something in this post about Measuring Social Media ROI? I’m game. Contact me at patrick@newpointmarketing.com.

And, as always, Keep Moving Your Brand Up the Food Chain!

Patrick Nycz
Founding President
NewPoint