Last Friday morning, I had an informative conversation with new friends Paul May and Jeremy Bencken of BuzzStream. The topic was return on investment (ROI) in the world of social media/social marketing and whether companies will continue to spend money on social endeavors without a demonstrable return on their investment. What spurred the conversation was Paul’s recent blog post inspired by friend and fellow blogger, Jason Falls, similarly focused post.
What I liked about our discussion was the fact that Paul, Jeremy and I were all completely aligned. While we appreciate the “Clue Train” mantra that many folks cite these days about social media/social marketing being able to put a “human face” on a company, at the end of the day a company needs to be able to be capable of demonstrating real results from their social efforts. What this doesn’t mean is that the two goals need to be mutually exclusive and in fact, when done correctly, a company can enjoy greater results by being human AND tapping into the power of social
This is reinforced by what we’re seeing in terms of results from some of the companies that our company, Powered, helps our customers enjoy (yes, I know I promised I wouldn’t talk too much about Powered but the results we’re seeing from our customers social marketing/elearning programs reinforce my point). As we wrap up our annual ROI report, here are just a few of the preliminary results our customers experienced in 2008.
Of our customers’ web site visitors who participated in one of our “Powered” learning centers/managed communities:
- 92% would recommend our customers’ site to a friend
- 95% would visit our customers’ site again
- 85% would recommend our customers’ brand to a friend
- 66% would be more likely to purchase from our customers’ brand
- 63% have a more positive view of our customers’ brand
Yeah, I was impressed when I first saw these numbers too, but what I really liked was the fact that our account services and content teams here make a point of regularly encouraging our customers to be open, honest and transparent with their customers. One might think this is a no brainer given the fact that our customers are investing time and money into these programs but that’s not always the case (as evidenced by Gartner’s recent report). Even better, most of our clients actually listen to us.
So is your company measuring ROI around its community efforts? Does your community tie to specific business goals like engagement, loyalty, purchase intent or other traditional marketing metrics? If not, you may want to start thinking that way. While it’s important to put a human face on your brand (and that can likely be the BIGGEST area of impact for your company), having measurable programs will be critical in helping protect your social marketing/social media programs in tough times while the world sorts through its current credit/financial mess.
If you have examples of companies that are doing a great job of growing and measuring their “social” efforts, please include in the comments below.
Cross-posted on http://theengagedconsumer.powered.com/
