How to Prove Social Media ROI

In a world of dirty words like “Millennials” and “Boomers,” we’re here to help bridge the gap when it comes to social media ROI. By this point, most everyone knows that social media is important. But just how crucial is it? How can you prove that not only is social media marketing imperative, it may warrant replacing other parts of your advertising strategy?

Proving ROI isn’t easy, especially when you’re competing against decades-old traditional marketing practices. Not to mention social media is changing and evolving every day. Below are a few things that may help make a strong case for marketing dollars to put towards social media.

Two huge components of social media are brand awareness and social care, so those are the focus areas:

Brand Awareness

What you’re probably already reporting on:

• Audience Growth
• Number of Shares
• Reach

How to Level up and impress:

• Show growth in search volume
  • Google Analytics allows you to determine how many people visit your site via searches and see how many times a given query has been searched on google
• Show growth in direct web traffic—You can do this in a couple of ways:
  • Use Google analytics to show what percent of your web traffic is coming from social media
  • Show year-over-year data on the above if you’ve recently amped up your social marketing game
  • Run a Facebook or Instagram ad for a month and see how it impacts your direct web traffic to prove your case

Social Care

What you’re probably already reporting on:

• Your brand’s engagement
• Your response time to consumers

How to Level up and impress:

• Give examples of interactions from your fans that show brand loyalty
• Calculate your NPS (Net Promoter Score) every year to track growth
  • Here is a quick run-down of how to find your NPS:

If you have an email list, send a quick two-question survey to your contacts:
“On a scale of 0-10, how likely is it that you would recommend [BRAND] to your friends, family or business associates?” and “Why?”

Customers that give you a 6 or below are Detractors, a score of 7 or 8 are called Passives, and a 9 or 10 are Promoters. To calculate your Net Promoter Score, subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters. It is that simple. So, if 50% of respondents were Promoters and 10% were Detractors, your Net Promoter is a score of 40. Given the NPS range of -100 to +100, a “positive” score or NPS above 0 is considered “good”, +50 is “Excellent,” and above 70 is considered “world-class.”

 You can then use the information in the second question to increase customer loyalty. Find more in-depth information here

If you can report on some of these in-depth measurements, it will likely give you the leverage you need to make your case for earning extra marketing dollars to put towards your social media campaign. For more information on proving social media ROI, check out this Q&A blog series.

If you’d like to learn more about this topic, please reach out to the NewPoint team. Interested in more food marketing topics? Visit our Food for Thought page or check out NewPoint’s Patrick Nycz’s book: Moving Your Brand Up the Food Chain.