We’ve been saying the same thing for a while now. Everyone knows social media marketing is good for business, but no one has a surefire method for quantifying the results. To get around this, most marketers make themselves feel better by saying that social media marketing is primarily about brand awareness. This is true and important. Having your name out there is better than not, but awareness alone doesn’t pay the bills. That awareness needs to convert into sales and that’s the problem. Not the “getting sales” part but the “measuring sales” part. Wildfire just put together a new infographic on this very topic. You can see the whole graphic when you click here . I’d like to focus on one part. Most marketers are still focusing in on the things they can count, likes, comments and fans. However, an increasing number of marketers are looking at revenue. I don’t have the stats to prove it (if you do, please feel free to link me) but it seems like it wasn’t that long ago that revenue wasn’t even a factor. It was all about collecting fans and creating awareness. Finally, we’re expecting to see a dollar return on dollars spent. 58% of those surveyed by Wildfire said that social media increased sales and partnerships. 41% said that social media helped them cut costs! Maybe because they fired their blogger and got interns to post to Facebook for free? I don’t know that we’re ever going to find a way to accurately count the dollars derived from social media marketing. It’s not in the nature of the beast. Social media is all about sharing from person to person. It’s about giving info to your current customer with hopes they’ll use it to bring in a new customer. How do you quantify that? Does it matter? Marketing Pilgrim’s Social Channel is proudly sponsored by Full Sail University, where you can earn your Masters of Science Degree in Internet Marketing in less than 2 years. Visit FullSail.edu for more information. If at the end of the month, your company made a profit, then keep doing what you’re doing. You may not know if those sales came from Twitter or Facebook but you made your numbers and that’s all that really counts.
