Having a strong social media presence can significantly benefit any business. From increasing brand awareness and exposure, to enhancing user engagement and even boosting search rankings. But did you know that social media can also have a huge impact on your revenue?
Using social media to sell is the most current and arguably the best way to increase your business’s sales revenue. Here we discuss how a great social media marketing strategy can be advantageous to your bottom line.
How to equate the performance on social media with sales and revenue
Social media is a super essential aspect of your digital marketing strategy. But it can also play a part in your business’s finances. Studies have shown that a solid online presence can lead to increased website traffic. This, in turn, leads to more sales. Additionally, social media management can help you to better understand your target audience. By keeping an eye on demographics, user behaviour and interests you can create targeted ads. This will help you to form better sales strategies and ultimately help you to increase your sales.
Popular platforms like Instagram and Facebook (if used properly) can greatly improve your company’s number of leads and profitability. It is estimated that the number of active social media users is set to hit almost 6 billion by 2027. And with social purchasing on the rise, social media has become a goldmine for businesses looking to attract more customers.
However, measuring the ROI of social media marketing is not very clear cut. A simple formula is: value from social media (sales, leads and conversions) minus the costs of your social media investment. Any ROI percentage greater than 0 means that your social media efforts have generated more value than what you invested.
There are also many metrics that can be tracked to determine how effective your campaigns are in relation to your revenue.
What tracking is required on social media?
The types of metrics you track should align with your specific business goals and budget. For instance, if you invest in Facebook ads, measuring ROI should be calculated as follows. Divide the revenue generated by PPC conversions by the cost of the ads. Then multiply by 100 to obtain a percentage.
When it comes to paid campaigns, it’s helpful to measure your CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) or leads. These metrics will help you to determine which types of ads are working and which ones require further optimisation.
“We recommend setting up your social media pixels and analysing your data both natively, and in Google Analytics for deeper and more accurate tracking. We also advise our clients to be agile with their ad spend budgets, meaning we can optimise ads that are performing well, promote any content that is trending or needs a little extra “boost” and reduce spend on ads that are not performing well.
This strategic way of approaching and monitoring ad campaigns allows our team of experts to be really hands on, and get the best results for our clients.” – Lauren Espach, Social Media and Content Team Manager at Cariad Marketing
Ensure that you track these metrics to ascertain the effectiveness of your social media campaigns:
- Reach – this measures the size of the audience that you communicate with.
- Impressions – impressions let you know how many people saw your post (but didn’t necessarily click on it).
- Engagement – this includes the number of likes, shares and comments on your post. High engagement means people are excited about your brand. Or it may mean that the specific content piece could be attractive to them. This is worth keeping in mind for future posts.
- Conversions – the number of people who completed your desired goal. This could be signing up for a trial, buying a product or subscribing to your newsletter. This is the best way to measure ROI for organic strategies. However, referrals are also useful in measuring sales as referrals can lead to future growth.
Top Tips for improving your tracking
Have a plan in place – before you launch your campaign, keep in mind the time period (how long it will run for), the products involved in the campaign (what you will be promoting), the type of campaign (it might include an exclusive sale or an influencer), the social networks involved and the resources spent.
Track social media sales with a promo code – a good way to measure social media sales is to have a dedicated promo code that is used when you’re running a sale or partnering with an influencer to promote a product.
Use special links and UTMs – if you use Google Analytics to measure web traffic, then UTMs (Urchin Traffic Monitors) can help you to monitor which campaigns are driving traffic to your website.
Ask customers – a simple form field asking shoppers where they heard about you can give you more information to track your sales. This should be implemented in an easy and clever way so it doesn’t take away from the customer’s shopping experience.
Use sales tracking tools – automate the process of tracking by connecting your POS and ecommerce sales data with your social media accounts.
Boost your sales with a foolproof social media strategy
Instead of spending a great deal of time, money and resources trying to figure out social media marketing yourself, invest in a dedicated social media agency that will do it all for you. From building a solid content strategy with tailormade posts to scheduling, posting, management and more, our team of social media experts will establish a strong online presence for your business.
Ready to make a ton of sales on social media? Pop us a message and we’ll get back to you ASAP.
