Organic Social Media ROI - How to Prove it

Navigating the ROI of social media can often feel like a Herculean task for social media leaders, managers, and teams. Despite the common misconception that social media management is as simple as snapping a photo and hitting "post," we know the reality involves much more.

From reputation management and community building to enhancing brand awareness and engagement, the role of social media is pivotal. Yet, it’s still challenging to secure the necessary resources, budget, and respect the industry deserves. Did you know that 55% of consumers discover new brands on social media first, according to Sprout Social?

If social media is so critical for brand discovery and engagement—with 78% of consumers more likely to purchase after a positive interaction—why is it so hard to prove its ROI?

Let's break down the overwhelm. Here’s a streamlined approach to start demonstrating the value of your social media efforts effectively:

1. Define Your Social Team’s ‘Why’: Understand your brand’s mission and translate this into a clear vision for your social media efforts. Establish the roles, responsibilities, and boundaries for your team to optimize collaboration within your organization.
2. Create KPIs That Reflect Business Goals: Align your social media objectives with the broader business goals. Develop specific KPIs for your team that ladder back to these objectives and show how your efforts move the needle.
3. Master Data Storytelling: Use your data not just for metrics but to tell a compelling story. Visual presentations that highlight key successes and areas for improvement can transform data into persuasive narratives for stakeholders.
4. Stand in Your Power as Social Experts: Maintain confidence in your expertise. Foster strong relationships with senior leadership and consistently communicate the strategic value of your work, using data as your foundation.

How I Frame Organic Social Media Success

One of the ways I like to do this is by framing it as a journey to ESTABLISH A GROWTH TRENDLINE. Organic social media has the power to establish a growth trendline for a business that all other marketing can build off of and accelerate.

If your social media growth is on a path up and to the right, then you have to look elsewhere in your marketing to determine where the friction is.

Look at your Google Analytics and observe how much site traffic and users are coming from your social channels. If those numbers are going up and to the right as well, with a growth trendline that correlates to the social channel growth trendline, then your social media is moving people down the funnel.

Once they get to the site, that is not the social media manager's domain. You know your social media is driving awareness by the social channel growth trendline, and you know it is generating engagement by the site traffic attribution trendline.

Getting to the Conversion Metric

Everyone involved in the social media of a business, including the CEO and founder, need to be aligned on what success looks like. Everyone needs to understand that the customer journey is complex. Often times, a user will see multiple social posts, visit the site multiple times, and have a variety of other touchpoints in their journey before they convert.

If you're an early-stage startup, you're likely wasting time harassing your social media for conversion attribution. Just make sure your social is on a growth trendline on your social channels and your site traffic, and know that as your followers and reach grow, your social media is helping you rack up those customer journey touchpoints to move people to conversion faster.

If you have a big marketing department and can sic someone on the impossible attribution task, and have them dig through traunches of data to deliver partial insights to improve marginal performance, by all means do so. Build out complex conversion attribution strategies for your social media that will definitely fall short but will at least give you some data points to measure.

For most organizations, you're better off assessing your ROI by whether you have growth trendlines at the 2 levels of social channel and site traffic.

In the brief video below I break down how I approach establishing a growth trendline on social media with a case study example, and what success looks like.

I also give you some freebies on what to do beyond social media to get your organic traction and ROI ??

?? Discover the true essence of Organic Marketing ROI in this concise 3-minute and 33-second video. Dive into a data-centric exploration of organic growth, real account success stories, and actionable strategies to measure your ROI.

?? Key Highlights:

• Learn how to establish a compelling growth trendline.
• Understand the time horizons essential for organic growth.
• Gain insights from historical data to drive your marketing strategy.
• Explore 7 powerful methods to kickstart organic traction from scratch.
• Find out how to set benchmarks for marketing success.
• See the transformative impact on other marketing channels with successful organic growth.

This video offers a glimpse into the world of organic growth, highlighting its long-term benefits and the potential for reducing Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) to nearly zero. Witness real-life examples and current account data that demonstrate the effectiveness of a well-planned organic strategy.

If you're serious about scaling your marketing efforts sustainably, this video is a must-watch! ??

Let me know in the comments if you'd like to see more chart-explainer videos!

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