The Value of Social Media Marketing: Different Ways to Measure Effectiveness

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is here to stay and is increasingly central to marketing activities. 86% of marketers want to know the ROI value of marketing channels and they don't often have great measurements.  Furthermore, they may also be missing other important markers if they focus exclusively on ROI alone. What we find from a study entitled How companies evaluate the ROI of social media marketing programs: insights from B2B and B2C that social media expenditures are increasing and there are different methods companies use to determine online behaviors (Silva, Duarte, & Almeida, 2020). 

Those other methods include:

1. Comments

2. Number of Leads

3. Number of Followers

4. Views

5. Shares

6. Sales

7. Access to other sites

8. Clicks on posts

What the study does help us think about is that SMM marketing isn't just about ROI in a financial sense but takes into consideration other metrics that give a rounder view of how brands are created and how they interact with their environment. If you don't want to read the whole study don't worry but at least browse the introduction and conclusions. 

Silva, Susana & Duarte, Paulo & Almeida, Sara. (2020). How companies evaluate the ROI of social media marketing programs: insights from B2B and B2C. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing. ahead-of-print. 10.1108/JBIM-06-2019-0291.  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341410017_How_companies_evaluate_the_ROI_of_social_media_marketing_programmes_insights_from_B2B_and_B2C