Five Tips for Achieving Social Media ROI

Social media has become an essential marketing tool for connecting and building relationships with current and future customers. Like all your other marketing tools, it’s good to measure your return on investment. In the new Act-On paper, “Best Practices for Achieving Social Media ROI,” we share five best practices for attaining social media ROI – a hot topic worth discussing.

1.     Listen to your buyers to determine their needs and preferences for consuming content. When you know the channels and timing they prefer, it’s easier to be on the same page as your buyer, so you can be there with what they’re looking for.

2.     Align social media efforts with traditional marketing activities. Social channels are discrete, but should always be aligned with bigger, measurable marketing strategies in order to achieve more effective and calculable overall results.

3.     Map social media efforts to business goals and determine metrics of success. First define what you’re trying to accomplish. Leads and conversion often lead the list, but your business goals could lie in other areas, such as customer service or reputation management. Goals can only be achieved when they are made clear and measurable.

4.     Don’t neglect qualitative results. Spreadsheets don’t always tell the whole story. Qualitative benefits from social media could include business  intelligence; customer feedback; market insight; new ideas for  products or services; publicity; brand awareness;  solutions to problems; connections to new partners and suppliers; cost-effective customer service, and recruiting. (Not many of those fit into a standard control-chart or spreadsheet!).

5.     Become so useful customers turn to you first, out of habit. Blog, tweet and post on social media channels to solve customers’ problems, not just to offer discounts and gain attention. Stay in touch with customers so they will feel comfortable coming to you with questions and concerns; this could result in retention and advocacy.

Got more tips for achieving social media ROI? What’s working for you? Let us know by leaving a comment below!

About Paige Musto

Paige Musto is Sr. Manager, Public Relations and Social Media at Act-On Software. She brings 8+ years’ experience in public relations and social media for high technology companies in the IT Security and SaaS industries. In this position she heads up all PR/AR and Social Media programs, driving the company’s brand and product awareness as well as leveraging social media to optimize lead generation. Prior to joining Act-On, Paige was Manager, Public Relations at NetSuite (NYSE: N) where she drove corporate, channel and partner PR and thought leadership programs, as well as established the company’s social media program. Paige has held various communication roles at companies including VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN), Check Point Software (NASDAQ: CHKP), and RSA, the security division of EMC (NYSE: EMC). Paige holds a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Communication from the University of California at Davis and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) with an emphasis in Marketing Management from California State University-East Bay. In her spare time, Paige enjoys shopping, reading and watching sports—Go Niners!

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