Every digital marketing agency worth its salt puts in place comprehensive techniques for gauging social media ROI. Doing so is especially essential to get a better understanding of what aspects of your campaign work and what don’t, so you can double down on the good and weed out the ineffectiveness.

Here are some of the top tools and techniques that the top social media marketing services use to measure ROI on social media: 

• Working Out Roi In The Most Basic Way Possible

According to Statista, 34% of marketers don’t know how to calculate social media ROI. But in its simplest form, here’s how the most elementary formula breaks down:

• Take note of investments made (or expenses of the campaign)
• Record return on that investment (earnings)
• Subtract the investment made from the return (i.e. return – an investment made). Let’s call this difference the “outcome”
• Finally, divide the outcome by the investment made as a percentile- i.e. ((outcome/investment made) * 100)

If the result of this calculation reads anything below zero, your social media campaign is not making you any money. A positive figure is good but it has to be large enough to justify the costs and efforts. As a general rule of thumb, a survey by Forbes establishes that most marketers achieve at least 95% ROI with social media marketing. Some attain as much as 300 to 500%.

• Identify Content ROI with Google Analytics

Why is social media ROI so hard to quantify? It’s because people have different goals for their campaigns, hence we may not rely on just one formula to do so. If your goal is to better understand what content resonates with your audience and social media algorithms, then you’ll want to keep track of metrics such as:

• Conversions
• Page views
• Website visits
• Traffic across social media channels and more

Measure these metrics against your initial numbers to figure out ROI. One great tool that lets you stay on top of all this data is Google Analytics. You can even use the Network Referrals tab of said tool to understand how each social media platform is performing. Furthermore, you can also use the Conversions tab to gauge conversions for every platform as well. 

• Use Sked Social for Instagram ROI 

Are you keen to track ROI for an Instagram campaign? When executed correctly, BeProfit reports that Instagram can return up to $65 per sale. Sked Social is a particularly great tool for understanding ROI for this platform. It offers comprehensive Instagram analytics and generally enables marketers to:

• Track the popularity of Instagram stories
• Perform competitive intelligence
• Measure traffic originating from your bio link
• Determine trending topics
• Track lead generation and conversions

Additionally, a key feature I like about Sked Social that I would encourage you to explore is its timing feature. Sked Social gives insights into the best times to post on Instagram to further maximize your conversions.  

• Perform Sentiment Analysis with Mentionlytics 

Consumers don’t buy from businesses they don’t trust. In fact, 8 in 10 people won’t consider a purchase if they have little faith in the brand. That’s why it’s also important to get an in-depth perception of business reputation using social media sentiment analysis tools such as Hootsuite Insights and Mentionlytics:  With Mentionlytics, for instance, you can discover positive and negative comments around a keyword or your brand at large.

That being said, some of the key metrics you can track to calculate social media ROI for brand reputation include:

• Social media likes
• Referral traffic
• Online ratings
• Domain authority

Brand reputation ROI can be a taught nut to crack because it isn’t easily quantifiable, but these metrics above are usually a safe bet. 

• Leverage App Analytics Tools like Analytico

As we’ve said throughout, the exact metrics to track are dependent on the nature of the goals for your campaign. Now, if you’re keen to promote mobile games on social media and want to track ROI for that, then these are the key metrics you want to be paying attention to:

• New app installs/downloads
• App acquisition
• Session intervals (the length of user sessions)
• Stickiness ratio (rate of user return)
• Lifetime value
• App churn and more

Fortunately, you don’t have to put in the leg work tracking each metric the hard way. Web and app analytics software solutions like Analytico can do all the hard work for you and provide ready insights that will help you gauge social media ROI for your mobile game or app.

Measuring ROI is Not Rocket Science

Calculating social media ROI can be a daunting process. That’s why many marketers just like to wing it and see how it plays out. As a matter of fact, 7 in 10 online businesses have no strategies in place to track social media ROI. However, it’s important to track ROI so that you can better plan for the future rather than focus on fleeting success in the present. Beyond helping you understand your profitability, tracking ROI can help you nail down budget allocation and kickstart tremendous revenue growth.

Author Bio

C R Venkatesh has 24 years of experience under his belt, spearheading the digital marketing and IT solutions giant that is Dot Com Infoway. He has also worked as an Editor of Apps World Mag since 2016 to date and likes to keep abreast of trends making headlines in the world of IT. A qualified mechanical engineer by profession, CR Venkatesh has a penchant for mobile games and has collected numerous high-profile awards over an immensely successful career. He bagged the IT Professional of the Year accolade at The Golden Globe Tigers, the CEO of the Year Award 2020 by IAF India, and the Best Achiever Award 2023 by Nakshatra Awards, to name a few.

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