Marketers are hopeful that this will be the year that they finally link social media marketing to ROI, a new survey says.
According to the report from Bazaarvoice, 74% of CMOs predict they will finally tie social efforts to hard ROI this year. The survey polled 175 CMOs from The CMO Club, including those from B2C and B2B companies in various industries.
In 2009, 84% of companies did not measure social media ROI — in 2011, that’s not an option. Business decisions are best made when they are based on hard numbers that measure success, and social media efforts are no longer an exception.
For the past few years, marketers have been content to measure “soft” metrics, such as the number of “Likes” or followers their brands have acquired. These numbers, though, are usually not indicators of an active community.
While those soft metrics still rank highly in importance, marketers are now turning to more traditional metrics that showcase true value. Site traffic tops the list as the most important factor for CMOs measuring social media ROI, as it did last year. In 2011, though, twice as many marketers plan on incorporating conversions — the total number of completed desired actions, such as “Likes” or clickthroughs, divided by the total number of impressions — as compared to 2010.
When asked which social activities resulted in the highest ROI, survey respondents identified Facebook as their platform of choice. Ratings and reviews sites ranked second on that list of high ROI performers. Notably, neither of these activities won hearty responses, as many respondents were more likely to say that they did not know which activities brought in the highest ROI. Another large chunk of respondents did not participate in the activities mentioned.
As ROI is increasingly used to assess the value of each social marketing activity, it seems inevitable that brands will begin to focus on the platforms that create the most added-value.
Which platforms pull in the most ROI for your business, and how do you measure social media ROI? Let us know in the comments.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, samxmeg
Charts courtesy of eMarketer
More About: business, MARKETING, ROI, social media, social media roi
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