Measuring Social Media ROI: Tools, Techniques, and Tactics
In today’s world, most marketing strategies include social media as an essential ingredient—but it can be difficult to measure return on investment (ROI). A lack of effective evaluation not only leads to wasted time, energy, and money spent on advertising or sponsored posts; it can also result in missed opportunities for refining and improving your social media strategy to better serve your business’s goals. This post outlines best practices for analyzing whether your social media efforts are paying off and provides guidance for implementing metrics and tracking to effectively evaluate ROI.
The Significance of Measuring Social Media ROI
If your company doesn’t yet have a solid strategy in place for assessing social media ROI, you’re missing out on valuable insights for optimizing marketing strategies, justifying social media spend, and understanding customer engagement and conversion through social channels.
It can be challenging to know what to measure—and how—in order to assess whether the benefits and value gained from social media activities align with a company’s marketing objectives. Just gathering data is not enough; it’s crucial to gather the right data to evaluate the performance of specific social media marketing tactics.
Another important factor to keep in mind when designing a measurement strategy: Evaluation cannot be an afterthought. Building in analysis up front will allow you to identify what you need to measure and then build those metrics into the structure of your marketing campaign. You’ll find an overview of tools, techniques, and tactics for effective evaluation in this post; if your company would benefit from customized support, Social City Consulting can create and implement a social media ROI measurement plan that’s tailored to your goals.
Key Metrics to Track
Essential metrics for measuring social media ROI include:
Engagement rates (likes, comments, shares)
Reach
Impressions
New followers/account growth
Click-through rates (CTR)
Conversion rates
Cost per lead
Customer acquisition cost
Taken on its own, each of these metrics can be valuable for assessing what types of social content connect most with your audience and how well your content is performing overall. However, simply focusing on growth in a given metric—without considering how that metric connects to larger goals—can result in wasted effort and financial resources, as well as a false sense of progress at the expense of actual business growth.
Techniques and Tactics for Maximizing ROI
Once you determine what data you can gather, it’s time to examine which metrics best line up with your key objectives. Comparing the available metrics against a list of your highest-priority marketing goals will help you determine which metrics to focus on and how to build a strategy that seeks to move the needle on those metrics. (You can also identify different metrics to prioritize for different purposes; for instance, some metrics may align with a brand awareness objective but not with lead generation, sales, or customer loyalty.) Considering alignment with goals will keep you from being distracted by the allure of rising numbers. For example, simply getting higher engagement or more followers doesn’t necessarily serve your brand if your content isn’t reaching the right people.
Depending on your specific goals, tactics you might use to maximize your social media ROI might include:
Optimizing the frequency and timing of your posts. This can be an easy way to get increased payoff for the same amount of effort, using insights from your social media dashboard to determine when your target audience is most likely to be online and ready to engage with your content. Examining analytics and best practices for each platform can also help you determine how often to post to maximize engagement and therefore increase reach.
Targeting and segmentation. For a goal of lead generation or audience growth, you might use targeting to connect with people similar to your most engaged audience members or loyal customers. When seeking to drive purchases, you might present different messages to different segments of your audience—or you might consider a strategy of boosting brand loyalty by rewarding your most engaged customers with special recognition, discounts, or opportunities for community connection.
Split testing. Many types of paid social media (such as Facebook/Instagram ads or boosted posts) offer the opportunity to split test. With this tactic, you set up two or more versions of a post or ad, and the platform randomly selects which version to present to a viewer. Split testing can maximize your return on ad dollars spent, since you can review the results and deactivate some versions of your message, while letting the ones that are performing best stay active and reach more people. This tactic can also give you qualitative information about which types of messages connect best with the people you want to reach.
Content strategy refinement based on data insights. Based on what you learn from your analysis of post frequency and timing, targeting and segmentation, or split testing, you can update the messages you share to better resonate with your audience. Monitoring and evaluating social media metrics can lead to a deeper understanding of your customer base.
Retargeting. Similar to online advertising, some social media platforms allow you to track users who have expressed interest in your offer (for example, by clicking on an ad or boosted post) and specifically target those people to show them your content in the future. Retargeting can also include even more advanced tactics, such as focusing specifically on people who added an item to their cart on your website but didn’t complete the checkout process.
Tools for Measuring Social Media ROI
In any plan to measure and maximize social media ROI, it’s crucial to have the proper tools to support your strategy’s successful implementation. Many platforms (including YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, X, and Meta for Facebook and Instagram) have built-in dashboards that include some metrics and insights about your audience (such as demographics, location, and usage patterns) and how they engage with your content. However, for a more thorough approach that synthesizes results across multiple platforms, you may wish to use a third-party tool created for this purpose. Examples include Google Analytics, Sprout Social, Zoho, Hootsuite, Buffer, and Crowdfire. Plan prices and features will vary, so finding the right tool for your company may take some research. Keep in mind that the cost involved can be offset by the time and money you save by using the valuable insights the third-party tool provides.
Whether your goal is growing your audience, boosting engagement, growing your sales, or improving the efficiency of your marketing efforts, measuring social media ROI is an area you can’t afford to ignore. When you engage well-targeted tools and insights to help you in this pursuit, it enables you to craft a cohesive approach that integrates social media with your brand’s overall marketing strategy. What’s more, it allows you to make strategic adjustments to based on data-driven insights, thus maximizing your return on the money, time, and energy you invest. If you’re seeking an expert partner to help you implement a social media measurement and evaluation plan, Social City Consulting has the experience and expertise to help you build out this plan.
