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Are you interested in knowing how well your social efforts are converting into leads and contributing to your client’s overall business goals?
Any successful marketing strategy requires a clear understanding of how to calculate ROI or return of investment. Besides, it’s something that your clients would want to know. They would also like to see how you contribute to their bottom line and how much money you’re making them.
But with the ever-changing landscape of social media, social ROI can be tricky for marketers, like you and me, to understand and quantify.
But don’t despair!
I have teamed up with Agorapulse to give you a sneak peek of their newest feature that allows us to understand social ROI better.
And the best part? It allows you to create super detailed social media ROI reports for your clients — and fast!
In this blog post, I’ll walk you through how you can do just that in Agorapulse so you, as a social media marketer, can finally:
- Have a clear understanding of how your organic social media campaigns and paid ads contribute to the bigger picture
- Be able to present your results to your clients, and
- Prove the value of your social media campaigns.
I know you’re excited as much as I am, but before we dive into the nitty-gritty details, let’s first talk about what Social Media ROI is.
What is social media ROI?
We’ve all heard of key performance indicators like the number of followers, likes, engagement, reach, and website visits. But what do these mean in terms of dollars and cents? Do these vanity metrics even have monetary value, to begin with? What about paid ads? Can you tell which content is doing better than the rest?
That’s where social media ROI comes in.
Social media ROI, or social media return on investment, is a performance metric that measures how much money you’re making for every dollar value you invested on social media marketing.
In other words, it’s primarily concerned with how social media traffic, likes, comments, and other forms of engagement turn into leads… then into sales, and so on. It also gives us a perspective on how much money your social media marketing strategy brings to the table.
Why social media ROI matters in digital marketing.
Social ROI, in essence, is essential because it allows you and your clients to:
- Judge the effectiveness of your social ads and posts;
- Understand how social media contributes to your bottom line;
- Make data-driven decisions when allocating marketing resources and ad spend budget;
- Calculate the value of a like, follower, or impression in both social ads and organic traffic;
- Demonstrate the importance of social media marketing to clients or management;
- Compare the social media costs and ROI from one social media platform to another;
And more.
ROI is a key performance indicator that should be constantly tracked and improved as part of your social media strategy. It’s not always easy to follow, but it can be done with the help of the right social media tools.
Now that we know all about social ROI, let’s move on to how you can measure and prove ROI using Agorapulse.
How can we measure social media ROI?
As with most KPIs and social media marketing metrics, calculating ROI begins with a few data points.
For example, let’s say a person saw your Facebook ad, clicked the link you shared, visited your website, and bought something from it. To calculate social media ROI from a specific social network, you would then take the amount of money you made from sales and subtract the expenses from your social media budget for that campaign.
Sounds easy, but calculating social media ROI can get even more complicated than that, especially when you consider the different ways people can interact with your brand on social media. There are, after all, a million social media actions you must keep track of to understand how social media marketing is impacting your business.
So collecting data from the social media posts to the website visits to the actual sales is crucial — and that’s where it gets a little tricky.
While most platforms provide insights on engagement, website clicks, and other social media analytics, they don’t necessarily show you precisely what happens in the next few stages of the customer journey. What actions do potential customers take on your website after clicking through from social media? Do they even buy anything?
This is where third-party tools like Agorapulse come in. They help you connect the dots between social media, website visits, and sales. And in the next section, I’ll show you how Agorapulse can help you calculate social media ROI and help you achieve your conversion goals for your next campaign.
How you can use Agorapulse in tracking and measuring social media ROI
Note: Agorapulse’s new reporting feature, called Social ROI, allows the tracking of social media ROI. As of this writing, it’s still in beta, but if you want a sneak peek you can schedule a demo here.
Now, let’s get to the fun part — let’s explore Agorapulse’s Social Media ROI.
So, the first thing you need to do is log in to Agorapulse.
Next, you need to integrate Google Analytics with Agorapulse to connect the necessary trigger and data points I mentioned above. Think of these as special UTM links that make reporting 10x easier on Agorapulse.
Note: Not only does Agorapulse integrate the necessary KPIs, but it also connects the social media goals and business objectives you previously set in Google Analytics, making reporting a breeze.
Once you’ve successfully set up Google Analytics within Agorapulse, you’ll then notice two different types of social analytics.
- E-commerce. It refers to all kinds of shopping that are happening on your website.
- Goals. These are the KPIs that tie in with your social media goals and objectives. Examples of these are email signups, freebie signups, and all other KPIs that are non-e-commerce.
When you scroll down further in the Social ROI Report, you’ll find all sorts of KPIs essential in measuring social media ROI. It also gives you an excellent overview of how your social media marketing efforts are performing. This is where you’ll find where website visitors and transactions come from and how much revenue is generated in a certain period. Not only that, though, but Google Analytics within Agorapulse will also give you an idea of what exactly is happening on your website and in specific social campaigns you need information on.
Much like Facebook Pixel (or probably even better), Agorapulse’s social media analytics tool lets you see visitor numbers, transactions, and even generated revenues filtered by campaign or source (think social channels, funnels, and more).
And the best part? Agorapulse pulls all the information from your social platforms regardless of how you scheduled your content. It doesn’t matter if you scheduled your social posts on Agorapulse or natively on Facebook — everything you outlined in your social strategy is accounted for!
This is what makes Agorapulse a powerful tool in measuring social media ROI. Not only does it give you detailed insights, but it also allows you to see the big picture and how your social media marketing efforts are performing as a whole. In a way, it’s somewhat similar to Facebook Pixel, but Agorapulse is much more encompassing and has everything you need in one place.
Now, tracking social media ROI won’t be able to tell us if a specific person bought something from the website. Still, it gives us social data that informs us which specific social media posts are driving the most website traffic and conversions. In other words, this social media tool informs us which posts and types of posts are performing better than the rest so you can double down on them and produce even better results — be it for lead generation or to increase brand awareness.
And one more addition that’s making my heart skip a beat out of excitement is the fact that Agorapulse allows us to see which authors and social media team members are driving the most website traffic, conversions, and overall social media success. This is super valuable information, too, especially if you’re looking to work with influencers!
There’s no doubt about it: this is the kind of social data that allows us to see what’s working and what’s not so that we can make necessary changes to our social strategy on the fly!
In Summary: Social Media Marketing ROI with Agorapulse
That’s it! Those are the basics of using Agorapulse’s social media ROI reporting tool. With this, you should be able to measure and report the social media ROI without having to spend a lot of time (or money) trying to figure out how to do it. Agorapulse’s nifty feature will also help you make informed decisions about your social media marketing efforts and what’s working best for your business.
Now that you have an overview of how to measure and report social media ROI, it’s time to put this information into practice! The first step is to sign up for a free 2 month trial of Agorapulse and start tracking your social media metrics. By clicking on that link, you’ll gain access to Agorapulse and be among the first few to try its newest features that measure ROI and more.
And if you’re looking for more information about this soon-to-be-released Agorapulse feature, follow this link. That’s where you’ll find all the juicy details about how to measure and report social media ROI with Agorapulse and schedule a demo of the feature!
And one last thing: remember that data is a critical component in measuring ROI. It’s also crucial in making informed decisions to help boost your brand’s conversion rate, improve ROI, and ultimately achieve business goals in whatever social channel you’re using. So gather as much data as you can, and put it to good use!
Social media strategies, after all, work best with reliable and accurate data and not just on guesswork.
So, I hope you found this post helpful. If you have any questions about using Agorapulse and how you can use it to achieve your business objectives, leave your comments below, and I’ll do my best to answer them!