Comments on: Social Marketing ROI: Ignore At Your Own Peril

By: Sales Troubles? No Comment(s) « The Engaged Consumer

Sales Troubles? No Comment(s) « The Engaged Consumer — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 14:47:44 +0000

[...] community or social presence? Unless you can get people telling their friends and family about you (something online communities/social media is also good at) you have to hope that a magazine or newspaper will write about you or the editor of a third party [...]

By: 3 Reasons Why Social Marketing Critical to Success in a Downturn « The Engaged Consumer

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:50:35 +0000

[...] buy from us and xx% more likely to recommend this product/service to a friend or family member. See my recent post on ROI for more details on results we’ve seen with some of our [...]

By: astrout

astrout — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:37:15 +0000

Thanks Paul. As we discussed last night, I think we’re going to do a whole lot more agreeing over the coming months. Thanks for passing along Pam’s case studies. I’m checking them out as we speak.

Best,
Aaron

By: Paul May

Paul May — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:03:25 +0000

Thanks for the mention, Aaron…picture me shaking my head in violent agreement as I read the ROI numbers you presented. I suspect that these are the kind of numbers upper management is increasingly going to expect from marketers (particularly in this economic environment) and I think it’s a reasonable expectation. The numbers are there, it just requires some work to think through the goals for a project and the metrics that correspond to these goals.

Regarding the disconnect between thinking in terms of ROI as opposed to putting a human face on the business – I can understand why this makes people uncomfortable. At first blush, the idea of measuring engagement seems to contradict the idea of authentic conversations, but in my view, there’s no real contradiction. The way I view things is that engaging in an authentic manner is a pre-req for success and measurement just helps you ensure that you’re interacting with the community in the way that provides them with the most value (i.e., if you’re adding value, it comes back to you in the form of more leads, increased customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, etc.).

As far as great ROI case studies, Pam O’Neal (a BuzzStream advisor) has a great one for word-of-mouth marketing. She quantified the value that resulted from a viral video campaign in a two-part series. Here are the links:
http://budurl.com/98zs
http://budurl.com/jdfu

By: astrout

astrout — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:45:05 +0000

Mike – thanks for weighing in. I watched your presentation (virtually) and wished I was able to be there in person at the SMB #10 in Boston.

I agree with you (and McAfee) that you can’t spend too much time agonizing over measurement, at least not at the risk of “analysis paralysis” but at the same time, there must be balanced with not allowing budgets to be cut due to lack of ROI. Sounds like we’re singing from the same song sheet!

By: Mike Volpe - HubSpot

Mike Volpe - HubSpot — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:18:05 +0000

I think you absolutely should measure the ROI of social media. I was actually at a panel discussion on this exact topic last week as part of the Social Media Breakfast series in Boston (link to a video of the panel in my name). Andrew McAfee (Harvard Business School Professor) had an interesting “just meausre what you can, but don’t be obsessed about ROI” point of view, which I think makes a lot of sense. You need to think about the ROI of computing an ROI (so to speak) and make sure you are not taking too much time and effort gathering and analyzing data, vs. doing real work. But, to not thnk about meausring anything is a bit crazy too, because if you have a business you need to justify your time and budget allocations somehow.