Choosing Better Marketing PracticesChoosing Better Marketing Practices

Most marketers know that measuring the success of a campaign is critical when it comes to determining where improvements can be made. While it might be simple to measure the success of traditional advertising, the metrics needed for social media roi measurement often go overlooked.

Here are three types of metrics that your small business should be paying close attention to if you want to ensure that your social media marketing efforts are being successful.

1. Exposure

Many social media campaigns are designed to increase your company's visibility in the marketplace. Reaching consumers through social media can be a great way to make them aware of the goods and services your company can provide.

Measuring the amount of exposure your company receives via a targeted social media campaign doesn't have to be difficult. Doing something as simple as tracking the number of likes, friend requests, and shares each campaign generates will help you identify the marketing activities that are most successful in helping you gain the exposure your company needs to grow.

2. Engagement

One of the advantages social media marketing provides over other traditional marketing outlets is the opportunity to engage in a conversation with your customers. Giving consumers a voice not only allows you to increase customer satisfaction, but it may allow you to identify areas where your goods and services can be improved in order to increase future sales.

Creating targeted social media campaigns that encourage engagement can be challenging, so you want to ensure that your efforts are returning results that justify the time and money spent on each campaign. Tracking the number of comments, direct messages, and hashtag uses a specific campaign generates will allow you to identify the social media marketing tactics that are most beneficial in reaching your target audience.

3. Revenue

The ultimate goal of any marketing campaign is to convert marketing messages into sales. Tracking revenue earned as a result of your social media campaigns is essential when measuring your company's ROI for dollars committed to social media marketing.

Be sure that you are creating specialized landing pages and sales funnels for each campaign so that you can identify which purchases were driven by which campaigns. This will help you identify the marketing efforts that are most effective, and refine those campaigns for future use.

Taking the time to carefully measure your company's ROI for social media marketing will help you invest your marketing dollars where they will have the greatest impact.