General Motors recently announced that they figured out how to track social media ROI. Given that much of what people claim is social media ROI is REALLY brand awareness, loyalty and positioning, among other soft ROI indicators, is there something that GM knows that we don’t?
Recently, I saw a television ad for a new women’s makeup foundation by L’Oreal Maybelline, but only caught part of the name as “Age Eraser.” Out of curiosity of how effectively L’Oreal spends its marketing dollars, I grabbed my smartphone to search for the product. What I found is a good lesson for marketers everywhere.
I read an article today that quoted Avinash Kaushik, author of the blog Occam’s Razor, who quipped, “Social media is like teen sex. Everyone wants to do it. No one actually knows how. When finally done, there is surprise it’s not better.” According to MarketingProfs, slightly more than half (55%) of all businesses are trying to do it, and most (79%) aren’t yet trying to evaluate the ROI of their efforts, with 41% not knowing if it even CAN be done. Having read many articles lately on the topic of evaluating the ROI of social media efforts, I want to distill the information down to a list of metrics that can be used.
I read a white paper recently geared to online marketers from the company FetchBack, a retargeting company. In a nutshell, they state that online marketers often track the metric “conversions,” which can be different for each marketer depending on their business, for their website and from specific campaigns. What people often fail to take into consideration, however, is what percentage of conversions are from people who absorb information and then come back later to purchase.
Like a PB&J is not possible without peanut butter, behavioral marketing is not possible without an investment into understanding a company’s customers through segmentation. Read more…
