Is measuring ROI on Social Media a myth? Or have we been looking at it all wrong?

I think at this stage, we are passed talking about vanity metrics like Followers and Fans and many businesses are starting to see that those numbers are not directly affecting their bottom line.

But wait…

This is not exclusive to social media. I have seen many times how advertising agencies are focused only on getting an award on an specific campaign, I have been in meetings where at no point, the question of “how are we going to increase sales?” has been put on the table.

ROI is not hard to measure in social media. ROI is hard to measure in marketing in general.

Another aspect of this complexity of measuring ROI is that there are items in the social media marketing plan that are not supposed to generate sales. If you are trying to measure the ROI of solving a problem for a customer, I’ll say you get a great return, a happy customer is huge, but it has no monetary value you can put on a spreadsheet.

Here is a very interesting Infographic from the folks at Invent Help that aims to make you look in the right direction. Let’s look at some of the data presented:

• 73% of CEO’s think marketers do not generate growth as they should and 77% think marketers don’t talk about sales, which is the only reason why a company is talking marketing in the first place (Although is worth mentioning that I know more than one CEO that is highly distracted by shiny numbers)
• Most marketers talk about Fans/Followers, web traffic and social mention
• There are some good examples of how sales are directly affecting business revenue like the Jimmy Choo Twitter campaign, which represented a 33% increase in actual sales
• 40% of Facebook users that has Liked a brand did it to receive discounts and promotions while only 13% did it to interact with the brand
• Social media offers companies other beneficial aspects that are not directly related to revenue such as a great vehicle for customer support, increased brand equity or market research.

What do you think?

Can we measure ROI is social media? When you think of your social media efforts, are they attached to a business goal or are they independent? Are you consciously trying to move the needle in sales when you spend time on Facebook or Twitter?

Share your thoughts in the comments section. Happy Friday!

Infographic courtesy of Invent Help.