Return on social media investment is no longer optional and almost all marketers agree to the impact digital platforms can create for your B2B business. As a social media manager, tracking the ROI of online campaigns helps you to convert likes, shares, and comments into real business success stories. Social media plays a critical role in developing a digital brand and ensuring there is consistent lead generation and business development activities.
Most people think about how to measure social media ROI for business. It is a multi-step process with various inputs, data, and considerations. In this article, we will walk you through the best tips to analyze and boost ROI for your B2B social initiatives.
Why Social Media ROI is Important?
Social media marketing is an organic activity focussing on top-of-the-funnel business opportunities like brand awareness. Translating these campaigns into conversion is difficult to manage if you don’t allocate resources to measure paid social advertising. Mind you, measuring metrics like followers, comments, and reach is effective but you need to assess whether the people following your channel align with your goals.
The target audience should have the buying intent to add long-term value and marketing ROI is about justifying every dollar and every rupee spent on social advertising and brand reach.
Let’s discuss the 5 best tips for analyzing social campaigns.
5 TIPS to Track B2B Social Media Growth
1. Clear Social Objectives
This sounds easy but not all marketers are able to crack the clarity game. The best possible step to calculate ROI is understanding the key pillars of the company and quantifying how to measure social media ROI for business.
Write down the value your digital marketing campaigns will achieve this year, such as:
- Brand awareness
- Building a loyal audience
- Online brand reputation
- Mitigation of business crises
- Engaging with relevant customers
- Latest trends, and online brand sentiment
- Positive lead generation and sales campaigns
It’s not about generating revenue from social media platforms, it’s about putting all efforts into key objectives that will give you better ROI in the future.
2. Capture Contextual Metrics
Nowadays, B2B marketers get caught up in tracking everything on social media platforms. This generates no value and throws you off track from the real insights that are driving ROI. How to measure social media ROI for business begins with choosing the right metrics to fully understand social investment.
Here are some examples of metrics to delve deeper into social strategies.
- Account Reach
- Engagement of posts, reels, etc
- Website visits
- Conversions
- Form submissions
- Email signups
- Detailed traffic breakdown
Before understanding how to measure social media ROI for business, ask the following questions yourself:
- Which metrics will help me determine what I need to post more or less?
- Does a particular metric fit into my business objectives?
- What are the key actions my audience will take after screening the content and whether these metrics will help to establish a clear link?
PRO TIP: While calculating returns, it’s best to choose a reporting cycle that matches your sales cycle. This will enable you to get detailed insights within the first month of running your campaign.
3. Calculate the Cost
Once you have set the metrics required to extract value, measure the cost side of the social media game. It includes all the expenses incurred to create and publish content across various digital platforms. It is important to track the following costs:
- Social media reporting tools and subscriptions
- Third-party agencies and digital consultants
- Content creation costs like licenses, assets, and fees working with influencers and freelancers.
- Recurring expenses like team training, salaries, etc.
Specify the time period and duration of the campaign which will allow you to extract relevant data regarding the costs of the particular activity.
4. Quantifying the Social Media Performance
This is a key stage of calculating how to measure social media ROI for business. You should be ready to figure out the data collected from Linkedln, Instagram, or other platform insights and convert them into actionable points with clear numeric data. Most social platforms will come with their built-in analytic tools but keep in mind that the capacity might be limited.
In addition to social analytics, use tools like Google Analytics to monitor site traffic and collect relevant data related to social media activities.
5. Use Benchmarking
The final stage of how to measure social media ROI for business is analyzing the previous data of the company. You need to look at the big picture to understand the role of social media in your B2B business. Invest in a tool that helps you to compare your brand’s performance against top competitors.
Look back on all your historical data to compare it against the same period and make seasonal changes to gather contextual data. The more information you have at hand, the better you will be at setting realistic social media goals and KPIs for the brand.
Likewise, let’s understand the ways to boost ROI to stay ahead in the B2B social media space.
3 Hacks to Boost Social Media ROI
1. User Testimonials
Most B2B customers value social proof and purchase a product only after a trusted recommendation. Most of the buyers check testimonials to validate the authenticity of your brand. Here are 3 quick tips to generate relevant social proof.
- Create an online community where your audience can share the latest updates, reviews, and trends in the industry.
- Live Q&A sessions, webinars, and podcasts to boost engagement and incentivize people to connect with your brand directly.
- Engage and cross-sell in multiple digital platforms.
2. Choosing the right social platform
We will get straight to the point – the role of Linkedln in reaching your B2B manufacturing audience is significant. While there is no denying its importance, you should implement an integrated social media strategy like an Instagram campaign along with running lead generation ads on linkedln.
Get creative to increase brand awareness and convert quality leads into potential customers. Many B2B buyers are channel-agnostic and a customized plan will give you the flexibility to target clients at scale.
3. Amplifying Video Generation
The answer to how to generate social media ROI for business begins with distributing relevant videos to potential B2B clients. Videos have become one of the best ways to propagate your brand’s reach and engagement.
The key lies in crafting engaging videos with storytelling elements that will humanize your brand and enhance its perception in front of your target audience. For example, Salesforce is garnering huge customer attention by making its product fun and engaging with visually attractive video elements.
Moving on to the next part, let’s address the commonly asked queries related to B2B social ROI.
FAQs – 5 Tips to Analyse and Boost ROI for B2B Social Media Marketing
How do you measure business impact on social media?
Monitor information like site traffic visits, page views, traffic volume, number of comments, shares, and competitive position in your industry.
How to define an actionable social media ROI?
Set a clear framework by tracking expenses, costs, and engagement metrics. Give realistic goals and benchmark your ROI against past analytical data. Figure out specific ROI for each social media channel by segmenting your audience, earnings, and total costs.
How to know if you have a good return on investment?
A positive ROI value is anything above zero meaning your social media investments have generated greater desired value than your total expenses.
What are the two components of checking social media investment strategies?
The two basic components of any social media strategy are:
- Return – the revenue generated from social campaigns and cost savings from your efforts.
- Investment – The time, effort, and resources spent in planning, optimizing, and publishing social media posts.
Final Thought
Finding out exactly what you want out of your social media strategy doesn’t have to be hard. It requires careful planning, optimization, forecasting, and execution to attract prospective clients to your business. If you are clueless about generating consistent social media ROI, get in touch with Midas Touch to fuel your B2B business to the next level.