Posts Tagged ‘roi’
Industry Challenge: can’t measure social media ROI
April 23rd, 2010
Yes I know, social media ROI, a very difficult subject, and I’m actually in the camp that believes social media cannot have an accurate, catch-all, ROI equation, not in the truest sense of either term anyway. So, was the title just an attempt to grab your attention? Maybe, but more importantly it was the industry challenge that Jeremiah Owyang highlighted when launching his new Altimeter Report: Social Marketing Analytics, which he announced yesterday.
Jeremiah has joined forces with John Lovett (ex-Forrester analyst) and Eric Peterson (ex-Jupiter analyst) both from Web Analytics Demystified. The report builds on Charlene Li’s (Altimeter founder and ex-Forrester Analyst) framework, and aims to measure the rapidly changing social media marketing space. A snap shot is included below.
Jeremiah sets the scene with: “Marketers around the globe are ranging from toe dipping to jumping all the way into the social marketing space -yet most lack a measurement yardstick. While experiments can fly under the radar for a short term, without having a measurement strategy, you run the risk of not improving what you’re doing, justifying investments, and the appearance of being aloof to upper management. To be successful, all programs (even new media) must have a measurement strategy, and we’ve done just that.”
The framework shown above includes KPI formulas which are designed to form the basis of internal measurement systems.”
If you are interested in learning more you can review the slide share presentation which is basically the full report, and attend the webinar, which will take place on June 3rd, titled;’ Social Marketing Analytics: A New Framework for Measuring Results in Social Media.
In terms of social media measurement, this is one of the fullest and most in-depth reports I’ve seen. That may put you off, but don’t think it’s all talk and no action; there are practical insights and relevant rules that any social media marketer will find useful and be able to apply to their specific role or campaign. This isn’t a catch all metric, but a guideline for KPIs.
So, if you truly want to understand the opportunities surrounding social media measurement, don’t try to wrap a traditional ROI model around a social campaign, start by reading this report and open up your understanding.
Social media ROI - sharing our experiences
November 19th, 2008
Three months ago I wrote a post about the importance of standing fast and explaining the reasons that we cannot always provide traditional measurements, such as ROI, as part of a social media campaign when questioned by our clients and peers. I still stand by this.
On Monday, Todd Defren wrote an excellent post, titled: ROI for social media marketing: it’s complicated, which summed up many theories and quotes from around the community, and has since received comments from even more influencers - great job Todd!
Reading Todd’s post, and looking back at Liberate Media’s own experiences, I thought it would be useful to share our thinking and progress, which has informed our position on the subject.
First of all, in reference to the big question of ROI for social media - Todd hit the nail on the head, it is complicated! In a traditional sense of: a rate of return used to evaluate the efficiency of a financial investment, ROI is specifically complicated by trying to apply numeric quantities to human interactions and conversations - as highlighted by Jason Falls.
So we fight the good fight and educate our clients - right? Right. But when speaking to metrics-dominated sectors such as retail and travel, as we have been recently, education is one thing, but in a harsh economic climate clients are far more likely to be swayed when they are told what they want to hear; that they can spend X on social media marketing and get X back.
Now don’t get me wrong, i’m not advocating that we just tell clients what they want to hear because the economy is tough, or in fact that we lost out on those clients as they went for alternative providers, neither are true. But, what I am saying is that while there are so many differing opinions on the subject, and therefore options, educating our clients on the issue is made even tougher.
This was a point of frustration, but over the same time period we’ve been busy continuing to develop our own metrics and frameworks to help clients to measure the tangible elements, while also communicating and evidencing that social media contains many points of human interaction that require a different approach.
As we developed our frameworks, and looked at the options of how social media relates to search marketing and other elements of the digital marketing mix, it became clear that as social media influences the function of digital marketing as a whole, the metrics that we use don’t need to be reflected through a single metric or score, so why make it so?
Furthermore, as has been mentioned previously on this blog and on many others, each campaign is unique, so a static metric framework, while undoubtedly useful, does not tell the whole story. In reality, the measurement points need to relate to core business objectives which will change from campaign to campaign.
This leaves us with an assortment of measurement points, including traditional metrics, all of which are useful, but need to be presented with a large dose of translation from the consultants involved, not by a single metric. So why try to distill the information down to a score when the power is in the detail?
I hope this brief overview has been a useful exercise, and helped in some way to move the conversation on, if not for many of the afore mentioned bloggers as they’ve undoubtedly considered this already, but from an education point of view.
The development of our own framework continues on an almost daily basis, different campaigns add new angles and considerations, and we will share more thinking as we continue to build.
Let me know your thoughts.