Business to Business (B2B) marketers have dedicated more and more of their marketing time and budget to social media marketing over the years, and no one would question the fact that having a strong social media presence is anything less than mandatory.
However, this does not mean that any company should blindly pour most of their efforts into social media without knowing what exactly what effects it is having on the business presence.
This is why it is important for businessmen to know their Return on Investment (ROI) for social media activity.
According to B2B Marketing research, shockingly, only 10% of B2B marketers “can demonstrate ROI on social media activity ‘most’ or ‘all’ of the time”.
Similarly, only 7% know their ROI even half of the time and 44% can identify ROI “rarely” or “not at all”.
While only 10% DO know their ROI, the same percentage DO NOT.
So, what are the major benefits of being aware of your company’s ROI?
ROI can help any company make knowledgeable decisions on where to invest its time and money, with quantitative data. This can also increase the effectiveness of any existing investment while decisions can be reached for the time and financial investments of future projects.
So to break it down for social media, it is crucial to know which types of post (ie video, images, plain text) garner which types of response. More precisely, this is the impact of the very content you share. You may find that sharing content which only promotes your own products or services is ignored, simply because posts appear to be self-serving.
However, providing content that is genuinely useful to your viewers will do the opposite. If you are assisting and educating your online community, then their trust for you will increase tenfold.
Other factors, such as simply including a question or small poll in a post, understanding the best times that the content is likely to gain a reaction from your audience and even the types of reaction you are getting (likes, shares, comments, retweets etc.) are important tasks for improving ROI.
B2B marketing concluded that its data demonstrated that the percentage of B2B marketers consistently aware of their ROI has dropped from 4% to 1% since 2011 – demonstrating a fall in confidence of social media ROI, regardless of better technology and analytical tools purely designed for this function.
Is your company aware of ROI on social media activity or for any other marketing effort?
To get on top of all aspects of ROI, contact us today or take a look at our work.