5 Ways to Prove Social Media ROI as a Marketer

As a marketer, chances are you’ve been pulled into a meeting or two and been asked the sometimes-dreaded question: “so, tell me Lior, what’s going on with our social media lately? I feel like I can’t prove the amount of time and money we’re investing for such little return.”

Yikes! Your first reaction might be to shut down your company’s Facebook page or worse, pack up and leave. But the truth is, as more companies invest in social media marketing (studies show that social media spending currently makes up nine percent of marketing budgets, is expected to increase to more than 13% this year and to more than 21% in five years), you need to learn how to properly track, analyze and measure your results – so you know what’s working and what’s not and you can continue to prove why social media is worth it.

First things first: what is social media ROI?

Social media ROI is what you’re getting in return for spending time, money and lots of efforts marketing to moms and families on social media. Your particular ROI may vary depending on what your goals are – but generally, they could be an:

• Increase in followers

• Increase in engagement

• Increase in website traffic

• Increase in sales

Before you track ROI, you need to determine your goals – which may be one of the above or something else you’re hoping to achieve.

Once you do, you can use these five techniques to prove the worth of social media so you can continue marketing to moms and families on the most important social media networks:

1. Track Social Referral Traffic

Not a surprise but in Google Analytics, you can track not only what people are viewing but where they’re coming from. Head over to Analytics and monitor your social referral traffic – and specifically, which sites are referring traffic to you (Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc.). Determine by how much you want to increase social traffic and compare month by month how your efforts are paying off.

2. Track Brand Mentions

One of your social media goals might be to increase brand awareness among your key demographics: moms and families. There are a variety of free and paid tools you can use to keep track of the amount of brand mentions you receive. Some of our favorites are:

• Warble Alerts: Set up a free account and choose which keyword you’d like to keep track of - perhaps your company name, the name of your blog, or even your website URL. You’ll get a daily digest of anyone who has mentioned that keyword on social media so you can track who is talking about your brand.
• Mention: Like its name suggests, Mention makes it easy to track whoever is mentioning you on social media. Similarly to Warble Alerts, you get a digest of mentions. You might want to set a specific goal (i.e. if you recently launched a marketing to moms campaign, you could set the bar at receiving 50 tweets/week about this campaign).

The best benefit of using these alerts is to be aware of who is talking about you online without using your hashtag or handle. You may be surprised at the amount of mentions you receive on a daily basis that you wouldn’t normally see because they didn’t tag you.

3. Monitor Twitter Impressions

To start marketing to moms, you want to get your product right in front of them – and Twitter is a great social media network to do so, considering the percentage of moms who use Twitter has doubled since 2011, according to Edison research (and it’s growing).

You could monitor the number of Twitter impressions you get per tweet using Twitter’s Analytics (available for most brands on Twitter) or get a jump-start on the competition and participate or host a Twitter party to really boost the number of Twitter impressions you get.

A Twitter party is a great way to get some buzz for your product and market to moms right where they are. You get instant exposure – some parties, such as #PTPAParty, have over 37 million impressions (eyes on your brand) in just one hour.

4. Track Subscriber Sign Ups

Increasing your email subscriber base may be one of your top goals as a marketer – and you can use social media to increase sign-ups. Nearly 91% of moms use social media regularly and you can leverage these social-media savvy moms in your next marketing to moms campaign.

You can use Twitter Cards (free) to encourage your social media followers to sign up for your email list and if you have a social media budget, you can also promote these cards to users of a certain demographic, location, age, or another criteria.

5. Track Engagement with Social Media Influencers

Every consumer is looking for brands to be authentic – and this especially holds true when marketing to moms. In fact, only 15% of consumers say they actually trust posts by companies on social media. How can you break through their barriers?

Working with social media influencers – mom bloggers who have a loyal following and are trusted by other moms – can help increase brand awareness and get moms to trust your company and products.

The best social media influencers should be ones that create and share content relevant to your business needs – so when marketing to moms, you should leverage a network of mom bloggers who have a built-in following of other moms who trust their product reviews and recommendations.

To get the most bang for your buck, consider working with a community of influencers – such as the 2,000+ influencer network made up of powerful mom bloggers and social media mavens. Then, once you do, track engagement. Are they providing honest feedback that you can implement into your product? Is their credibility enhancing your brand online?

Getting your company or products noticed on social media requires time, effort and money – but all that hard work can’t pay off if you’re not tracking your efforts and proving the value. Start proving the worth of social media with these five techniques so you can launch your next marketing to moms campaign on social media (I know I do).