3 Examples of Real World Social Media Conversion (and ROI)Effective social media strategy and execution varies based on the type of business you’re in (B2B or B2C) as well as the particular business vertical. Many marketers wonder if social media marketing is “right” for them, if they can be successful in social and how they’ll measure ROI. These are important considerations for any marketer to ask before engaging in a new strategy or channel.
To help provide insight and answer some of these questions, I want to share a couple of examples of real world Social Media Marketing cases with conversions and success metrics we’ve seen first hand. And while these examples may not answer your particular strategic or tactical needs, they may provide ideas on success metrics for different types of businesses as well as inspiration toward getting started in and measuring your social marketing efforts.
1. Internet Marketing Company - Business to Business (B2B)
Social Networking and Group Participation / Development on LinkedIn
This situation actually involves me in my role of business development at 10e20. Recently I was on LinkedIn and a member of one of my professional groups posted the following message to group memebers: “looking to speak with companies with special focus on social news and bookmarking to help develop traffic to publisher website.” (Paraphrased) As soon as I saw this (about 2 hours after it was sent) I sent a private message to this member requesting a phone call.
The call was set up and several weeks later we were doing business together. It’s likely that without participating in LinkedIn Groups, I would only have met this person offline at some date in the future, if at all. And, because I was prompt in responding through the LinkedIn system, it gave me a leg up on competitors who may have only heard about this through second hand word of mouth. The business lead was really quite targeted.
Conversion
- 1 new business relationship
- B2B Sale for ongoing consulting relationship
- Consulting revenue
ROI
By joining LinkedIn, joining several groups and being helpful to the community by answering some questions, this was one of the CHEAPEST new business leads I have on record.
2. Lifestyle Magazine Website - An online Lifestyle Magazine + Blog Website, Publishing
Social News & Social Bookmarking
With a start up magazine/blog website that monetizes on traffic, impressions and cost per click (CPC) advertising, this publisher was working to develop new traffic and awareness of the website and its great content. Traffic was growing but with active participation in social bookmarking website StumbleUpon, and several other social news/bookmarking sites the new blog site accelerated its growth by having the content achieve rapid viral popularity.
The publisher has since built a sustainable ROI on time and investment in social marketing of content against advertising revenue. Also, hundreds of new backlinks to the website have been developed as a result of social media content promotion. The compounding effect of social news/bookmarking for this publisher is paying big dividends.
Conversion
- Traffic: 10′s of thousands of visitors as opposed to hundreds.
- Clicks on CPC advertisements: thousands of dollars worth as opposed to pennies.
- Impressions for CPM advertising
- Links for SEO and site authority: hundreds of natural links instead of one “here and there”.
- Advertising revenue
ROI
Creating content is part of the publisher/magazine business model so the cost that has gone into social really comes down to time spent bookmarking and submitting content. The bookmarking efforts tally to a couple of hours per week. Advertising revenue from CPC ads tied to social visits far outpaces the time invested for social bookmarking. From this perspective the social media marketing is paying the business back many times over as most traffic is tracked to social media efforts. This is not even counting the link equity (for search value) being built back to the publisher’s domain.
3. Consumer Fashion Brand - Major Women’s Fashion Brand
Social Networking – Facebook, Twitter and more “profile” type sites.
A major national fashion brand with no social media presence worked over several months to establish a presence on social networking websites. Organic growth of their audience on these sites surged to 10′s of thousands of fans and followers; over 75,000 between 2 brands and 4 social accounts in just a couple of months.
Public discussion on social networking websites provided direct consumer feedback to the brands about how to improve their products and customer service. Additionally, social networking sites have provided a new channel to distribute deals messages increasing the foot traffic to key retail store locations for sales.
Conversion
- several hundred thousand dollars in new sales in three months of marketing
- new audience for the brand, reaching new, interested fans of the brand and engaging them
- more direct and effective Public Relations
- more direct and effective responses to customer service issues
- direct consumer feedback for product development. 1 new product is in development after only 3 months in social media
ROI
The equivelent of one mid-level employee’s salary to run a dedicated social media presence, strategy and management has yielded hundreds of thousands of dollars in return in positive online brand sentiment, consumer feedback for product development and actual product sales both online and offline.
These are 3 simple and real world examples of social media conversion and ROI. One could go on and on with examples of positive social media marketing case studies. It’s important to note too that for every success case there are likely an equal amount of social strategies that were fumbled and not properly executed. With that, take stock of your current strategy by conducting regular audits, competitive analysis and measurement through analytics and benchmarking. If not you can become part of the road kill and believe me, the road is littered with companies that fumbled their strategy.
We’re curious to know: what have been some of your experiences and cases with identifying, measuring and benchmarking social conversions and success metrics?
Jake, these are great success stories to hear about.
I too participate in LinkedIn Groups where success has led to business relationships as well as traffic and links to product/blog sites. One thing I would like to add is that Group members who have opted-in to receive the group digest email (either daily or weekly) will receive an email of the posted Discussions and Articles. From what I can tell, the most recent Group 'Discussion' posted (prior to email being sent) will be the Subject Line of the daily email sent via LinkedIn. If you watch the group activity over a week, you can get a feel for the time of day the daily email is sent.
Time your Group post and your Discussion title/question is the Subject Line and your name is the From Name. In all of my experiences (50 groups; the max), the Discussion section of LinkedIn has priority over news submissions for the group. So, FYI on the "email marketing" perk of LInkedIn Groups participation.
@marshallengland
Marshall,
VERY insightful feedback. Yes, the email feature of group discussion is exactly how this can benefit B2B scouting for relationships and solid connections / business deals. It's there, you just need to be a part of the community. Thanks for sharing b/c that's exactly how I found that posting.
Following you now on twitter too!
That's interesting and fresh info, thanks for sharing. As I can understand social networking is only supportive marketing instrument, isn't it?
Publishers definitely have a great advantage in the fact that they're producing (hopefully interesting) content every day, which saves a lot of the time and effort that other businesses need to put into "content marketing" strategies. Most of the magazine sites we work with have seen Twitter, Facebook and in some cases Digg enter their top 10 referral sources even without much active promotion. So with even a little bit of focused SMM effort they can see an almost immediate pay off.
Adam, no question that publishers have a content advantage. Your exactly right on that. We too see publishers though who *struggle* in social areas b/c they don't have the knowledge and expertise with regard to site layout, usability (and more) to be successful in social channels. So, even they need a fair amount of follow up/education to understand processes, layout and approach. Then, they need to know which niche sites and major sites to go after and which ones not to go after.
With regard to the non-publisher set such as brands, b2b, consumer products and ecommerce, they need to start thinking about being better content producers. Fortunately or unfortunately it can be the name of the game and the differentiator. And, most companies, when they really bare down and think about content, the find the possibilities are endless. I recently posted on that issue of getting that content out there in more effective ways.
http://www.10e20.com/blog/2010/01/20/bridging-the…
…with a graphic to go along with it:
http://bit.ly/aD2w43
Thanks for visiting and hope to speak with you soon!
That was very informative. Where else can I read real examples of social media conversion?
Thanks for sharing – that' relly cool and interesting! I find these examples very vital and real!
Thanks for sharing – that' relly cool and interesting! I find these examples very vital and real:)
Measuring social media up against ROI is difficult depending on how many outlets you've pushed the site in question on, Google Analytics and e-commerce tracking is essential to the metric measurement of ROI when it comes to social media. An evaluation should be done at the end of the week and the report gone through thoroughly, making changes and amendments to the optimisation plan on the fly, reflective and indicative changes should appear apparent if you've made the right choices.
Hi Jake, gr8 article on the benefits of SMM – Just by having a presence, joining in on the conversation, building your relationships, offering great content or linking to other content, then providing your marketing offer using the 80/20 rule … this simple approach to SMM enables us to help companies participate successfully in SM.
Reading about other companies success SMM strategies really help others to see the benefits of SMM.
Thank you, kindly.
When will I see results? What will those results be? These are common questions in the business of SMM. Having specific examples like these, which show the direct affect a social media marketing strategy can have on a companies bottom line, is great. Thanks!
All I know is that Social Media Marketing can pay off in tangible ways, but it does take time. The great thing is that it pushes you into doing business the old fashioned way. In other words, you need to start talking to people, even if it digitally.
Now it is second nature, we now make money specifically because we release via Social Media. If you think about it, with 98& of teenagers on one sort of Social media or another, can any business afford not to take it seriously?
They are your future clients, and the internet and specifically Social Media Sites is where you will find them!!
What about small B2B company as mine with no brand awareness? I think only LinkedIN will help and not Twitter or Facebook? Or I am wrong?
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Cool, thanks for sharing this informative post about social media promotion!
Hi mathews,
Thanks for this awesome post clearly social media is the major tool for startups to be noticed easily
and may be genuineness is the key to enhance relationships.
Thanks for sharing these examples – they are really clear and vivid!