How to Increase the ROI of Your
Social Media Campaign
Is your social media marketing plan performing in line with your expectations? Or are you just throwing away resources for a campaign that doesn’t produce a single conversion?
With social media becoming all the more prevalent, businesses want in on making sites like Facebook and Twitter as their main audience touch points. Nearly 50% of the world’s population is using social media right now, and 54% of this number log in to research about the products they want to purchase.
But while social media campaigns have a fairly high ROI, many businesses fall short in reaching the actual potential of their activities. Sure enough, the amount of ROI they generate should provide a clear illustration of what they lack in the long run.
When it comes to managing a social media marketing campaign for your business, it’s important to know how resources translate to actual value. There’s no question about the benefits that social media brings, but every dollar has to count.
The good news is that there are strategies you can use to improve the ROI of your social media efforts. If you are intent on improving the online presence of your brand and finding opportunities to grow your business, then here’s a guide to help you get started.
A. Make full use of analytics
Sure, using social media provides a great deal of benefits when it comes to engaging potential clients, but many businesses tend to see the big three (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) as promotional channels.
Social media goes beyond that because it involves a deeper appreciation of data analytics. That being said, constantly monitoring the performance of your social media campaign is vital. You need to know the volume of visits, engagements and conversions your activities generate in a set period.
To do this, you can focus more on key metrics such as the reach of the content you publish as well as the visitor frequency rate. It also helps to track your lead acquisition costs and retention rate.
These metrics should provide key insights on how you can calibrate your campaign and maximize your digital marketing budget for the best benefits.
But apart from these basic numbers, you can go deeper by using behavioral metrics. Marketing today is not just about reviewing the numbers and making simple adjustments that appeal to a general audience.
You also need to focus on what people think about your brand and what you can do to demonstrate your brand’s value.
With behavioral analytics, you can track and attribute revenue and customer loyalty to specific audience actions. What led them to purchase an offer? What is the engagement rate of your posts on LinkedIn? And what are the factors that drive customers to click through?
By perfecting your understanding of analytics tools and the different metrics that describe the performance of your social media efforts, you get a more accurate picture of what’s going on. And with better accuracy, you are able to make better cost-saving, ROI-improving decisions.
B. Build a sales funnel
If your priority is to get as many conversions as possible, there has to be a clear process for acquiring, nurturing and converting prospects. This is where a sales funnel comes in. While not everyone you engage can end up purchasing an offer, you can at least filter out prospects who are very likely to convert.
A sales funnel gives you an idea on the kind of information you can give or the action you can take to influence a prospect’s decision. This allows you to allocate time and money on activities that bring about a sale.
For a start, you can create a Facebook sales funnel that has everything you need to raise awareness, develop interest, nurture desire, and facilitate conversion. For this, you can start by creating a content calendar, which is sorted by type.
It helps if you are able to build a repository containing different types of shareable content, from infographics and videos to blogs, e-books, and newsletter campaigns. Diversification is key, so if you want your social media marketing campaign to produce the best results, opt to give something for every individual type of prospect.
We’ll go over the fine points of content targeting later, but once you have a content calendar and repository, you can create landing pages specific to the type of offer you are promoting.
From awareness, you now go toward nurturing. Remarketing can help you with this phase of the process as it allows you to engage prospects who are very likely to end up buying a product or service from you.
Providing them with a simple video ad or encouraging them to sign up for your mailing list can help with retaining visitors and increasing your campaign’s conversion rate.
The gist here is to come up with a sales funnel using the best content in your arsenal and look for ways to get people hooked on your messaging.
C. Create targeted content
A successful marketing campaign is not anchored on a spray and pray where you create content and hope that it engages the right audience.
This only results in wasted resources and time, and since you want every dollar to produce something of value, you have to prioritize high-value opportunities.
This means creating an ideal client profile, analyzing specific preferences, and creating content based on these preferences. It all boils down to how you develop a close relationship with prospects using social media posts, blog posts, and verbiage that’s aligned with their needs.
Audience targeting can add more value to your social media efforts because you want your content to resonate with people who need your product or service the most.
But how?
Social listening
When it comes to creating social media posts for a specific segment of your audience, you need to identify what your market is talking about. Through social listening, you can monitor discussions on topics you can write about or create content about. You just have to track trending keywords and hashtags and check out what other people say about your customers. It’s all about putting your ear to the ground so you have a good idea of what to do (or create) next.
Using the right hashtags
Hashtags are the bread and butter of most social media marketing campaigns, and that’s because these improve the visibility of your content assets. You simply have to pick hashtags with a good number of mentions on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Aside from that, use hashtags judiciously. If you manage a real estate business that helps retirees, you might want to create content for #SeniorLiving and make sure that the content itself is relevant.
Analyzing your competitors
The competition has its own way of doing things, and some of them are making a killing out of their social media efforts. So, if you think a competitor is doing better in terms of its social media engagement, visit their social media page and take notes.
It’s important to understand that content is king and for your social media to attain a higher ROI, content creation is something you must not overlook.
D. Automate your social media processes
Lastly, you can use certain tools and platforms that allow you to automate your campaign.
With software such as Hootsuite and SproutSocial, you can schedule posts at optimal times and track your metrics. This way you can always stay on top of your plan when you create and distribute social media content across major channels.
The costs can be too much for a small business, but if you think your product deserves all the attention it can get, then automation is definitely the way to go!
You just have to know the right platform to use. Here are four important considerations to pick a tool for automating your social media campaign:
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User-friendliness
Is the platform straightforward or does it require special training to handle? User-friendliness is about ensuring that the platform itself doesn’t waste your time. After all, automation is all about making complex processes easier, so you need to find a platform you can easily master within days.
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Goal-alignment
In this case, your goal is to raise your campaign’s ROI. Sure enough, your success in reaching that goal is determined by the type of automation tool you are using. That said, you might want to pick a platform that provides built-in analytics that can come in really handy in tracking your key performance indicators or (KPIs).
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Pricing
How much does it cost to use an automated social media marketing service? Raising your ROI involves a good grasp of the resources you have. So, it’s best to pick a platform you can easily adjust based on your budget.
Automating your social media processes is a great way to save time and money, but you have to be very meticulous in choosing a platform that produces the best results and lets you expand your campaign when you need it.
Marketing through social media can be costly and downright tedious. But if you use the right approaches, your budget and your business’ growth is as good as secured!