“purpose driven social” leads to Social Media ROI

“According to Green Hat and ADMA's B2B Marketing Outlook 2015 report, justifying social media usage is a challenge. The report said that 20% of business-to-business marketers say social activities last year garnered results, and an additional 25% saw results but said they were "not cost effective or consistent." Of those surveyed, 28% said their companies did not measure return-on-investment for social media efforts.” Nadia Cameron, CMO Magazine

So why, I asked when reading this article. Well, I am not sure but my guess would be the social media in question is missing purpose. Not in the sense of it has no reason to exist, but in its ability to answer the question…why does it exist.

What we teach our clients is very simple. Social media has the singular goal of driving traffic to your website. WOW, brain surgery this is not!

But seriously think about it. If you can't measure or clarify social media investment in this day and age of MAT and CRM systems it either means you are not using these tools, which roughly ½ of all B2B marketers are not. In fact only 64% of companies have connected MAT and CRM systems! Shame. Or your expectations of social are beyond the measurable.

Many think the tweet is the end to itself. In some cases it might be but in my view, in B2B marketing and sales…it is not.

I like my “purpose driven social” because I can measure clicks, traffic, then on site what my CTA’s (calls to action) and capture rates are…then the leads and the flow through the CDJ (consumer decision journey). Then also, revenue from these marketing generated leads. From social media driven traffic.

Sophisticated marketers might say “pooh” to this simple expectation or use of social and that's OK. Most of us want to help clients walk before they can run like you! If you can't prove your ROI, then they, and even you fail!

Purpose filled (drive traffic) social posts to cash flow. Now that is measurable ROI I can get my head around.