It is no secret that establishing a presence on social media is a best practice for businesses of all sizes. Social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter offer unique brand-to-user connections that, if leveraged properly, can seriously impact your bottom line. This being said, many people have a false perception of social media’s impact on ROI and how it generates a positive return. Social media generates a positive return when it is used to, drive website traffic, grow brand following, promote action, and build brand equity.
4 ways social media generates a positive return:
1) It drives website traffic.
2) It grows brand following.
3) It promotes action.
4) It builds brand equity.
Driving website traffic via social media
A business’ website plays a vital role in the best digital marketing and overall growth strategies. Social media is great for capturing attention and communicating, but it’s not the best resource for potential customers who want to research further. A website can be filled with valuable content like product and company information, white papers, contact forms, case studies, trial offers that help visitors make a purchase decision. The trick is to grab people’s attention on social media by posting great content, and then make it easy for them to visit your website by including links back to landing pages on your site.
Growing brand following via social media
Every single social media user is a potential customer. When a user “likes” or “follows” your business’ social media profile, they join your brand following and can eventually be converted into a lead and nurtured to a sale. Sounds easy, right? It’s not. There are two important things to consider when attempting to grow your brand following via social media – reaching users and converting them (getting them to “like” or “follow”). Posting content that users find valuable enough to “share” with their friends is a great way to extend reach, and offering channel-specific promotions is a great way to incentivise conversions. Once a part of your brand following, you are able to promote action and build brand equity.
Promoting action via social media
Social media is a very powerful promotion tool that can have serious influence on how, when, and if people act. There are two ways to promote action via social media – organically and through paid advertising. Organic promotions work best when a your target is existing customers (current social following) and paid advertising work best when targeting new markets is your goal. Sales discounts, coupons, contests, and upcoming events are all fair game, but be mindful of the 80/20 rule – 80% non-promotional content and 20% promotional content – so that you do not spam your following.
Building brand equity via social media
Building brand equity is where social media really earns its keep. People spend countless hours on social media and use it at all hours of the day, which makes it a great place to build or increase brand equity. By posting useful and relevant content and interacting with followers at the right time and on the right channel, you can build lasting relationships and a high level of trust with your following that will result in loyal customers. Understanding your ideal customer’s wants, needs, behaviors, values, and pain points will allow you to develop your content, brand tone, and overall social media strategy that will have positive results.
The next step is to measure social media ROI.
Measuring social media ROI
Tracking and then measuring ROI is the only way to know if your efforts are worthwhile. Marketing automation platforms like SharpSpring and Hubspot allow you to track and attribute revenue to specific campaigns and channels, including social media. We use these platforms here at Alaniz Marketing, and if you would like to know how we leverage their ROI tracking abilities please feel free to connect with us. We are more than happy to help.
