Not long ago we read an article about measuring ROI for Pittsburgh Social Media campaigns. We think ROI is a term meant for advertising, marketing, or branding initiatives and we aim to explain why. If you're measuring for ROI, you've got to call it advertising, marketing or branding. If you call it advertising, marketing, or branding it's not social media even though that may be the platform used to deliver the message. That’s the fundamental difference between Inbound Marketing and Outbound Marketing and why the distinction in terminology. We measure Social Media campaigns in conversions.

The term ROI stands for return on investment. The only way to measure the ROI for anything is to separate the return and the investment costs from all other factors including all other advertising and marketing. The sum total of everything it takes to achieve your goal is by definition your investment. Time, money, internal resources, outsourced solutions, and opportunity cost are all factors that must be included to determine investment. If you define “return” in other ways such as website traffic, blog traffic, or hit counts it’s not ROI it’s a conversion rate. We think the author gets ROI and conversion rates confused.

Another reason ROI is a bad measure for Social Media is that business is not static, neither is your competition. There are too many factors that change too frequently to measure ROI for social media campaigns. Business cycles, geographic, seasonal, and climatic factors, as well as other external reasons all affect your results and bottom line. To nail down a number is a pursuit in futility. If your going to come up with a measurement metric make sure it’s valid before you base investment decisions on it.

It's the sum of the parts not the measurement of each part that matters in our opinion. Conversions, however they come, are cultivated through the whole marketing plan.

Social Media Tips:

1. Use your skills and resources wisely as they are all finite.
2. Give campaigns, social and otherwise, a fighting chance by planning a prolonged dedication of resources and don’t waver.
3. Only after a defined period of time can you look back and determine where you’re campaigns are successful and where they need work.
4. Be persistent.
5. Have Fun.

Blackball Online Marketing is the home of the Online Marketing Technologist. Liven up your online presence by contacting us. “Helping People is Good Business”

Have a different take on this subject? Do you think we are getting this all wrong? We’d welcome your thoughts.

Pittsburgh Online Marketing –Improving Methods of Measuring ROI

Develop a Clear Pittsburgh Online Marketing Message

When it comes to measuring your ROI from your website or PPC advertisements most businesses rely on analytics, however these are only one form of measurement.

If your goal is to convert sales via incoming phone calls directly generated through a website or PPC ad and you get 10,000 clicks per day to your site and no calls, how good is this metric as a measure of ROI? It’s almost worthless, but it’s a starting point. Everybody has heard of the phrase “statistics can be misleading”, this is a case in point when it comes to using analytics solely in regards to ROI.

Analytics can show a lot about your visitors.  They are a fine measure of how web traffic arrives to your site, what geographical locations visitors are viewing from, what their patterns are for finding your site, how they behave when navigating your site, and where they leave from. Analytics can also measure other metrics, but for final sale rates generated from your site or ads they are only half the measure.

Let’s use the same client from above for an example. Let’s say this client sells 100 units during this day. This would lead us to believe that our Conversion Rate is 1 in 100 or 10,000 clicks/ 100 sales. However, how many calls does our client have to take to get those 100 sales? I suspect it’s more than just 100. We need to measure clicks / calls and then calls / sales.

Let’s not forget that business does not exist in a vacuum like the analytics used to measure it. Most businesses have a Marketing Mix which is far more diverse. Social Media Campaigns, Print Advertising, other Online Marketing listings, word of mouth, and customer Brand Recognition awareness also play a part.

The need for business to measure the effectiveness of Social Media Marketing campaigns, Website traffic, and PPC conversion rates to justify continuation of Online Marketing Campaigns is impossible to quantify by analytics alone. If a company is looking to quantify sales we must look beyond analytics.

Conversion Tracking and Return on investment (ROI)

The following statement comes directly from Google Adwords Help, “ROI is the ratio of your costs to your profits. It's typically the most important metric for advertisers because it is based on your specific advertising goals and shows the real effect your advertising efforts have on your business. ROI revolves around conversions: customer actions that you deem valuable such as a purchase, sign-up, webpage visit, or lead.”

This is all well and good and provides further data for an effective lead generation stream but it has to go further if ROI is to be measured from it. We need a conversion rate for our conversion rates generated by the analytics and the Conversion Tracking we now use and a better way to measure them. Sales are the only way to measure return rates in the traditional sense. Without sales there is no ROI.

Blackball Online Marketing specializes in all forms of Internet Marketing and Website Promotion. We handle Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns, Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Google Maps listings for Local Search Marketing, Social Media Marketing Campaigns as well as managing many traditional media delivery methods. Call us at (412) 377-7280 to discuss your Pittsburgh Online Marketing needs.

First off, what is a business grade (or class) email address? It's an email address with your business's domain name incorporated in it, for example:  jillsmith@acme.com. Email is such a major part of business communication these days, it's surprising the number of small and home based business people who use their Yahoo or AOL, etc., etc. email address as their company email. This is like using your home phone number as your work number.  Just starting out you may have to do that, but in time you know you should probably get a separate phone number dedicated to your business.

A business class email address does say something about you. It says you took the time to register your company in the Online world, which states you are not a fly-by-night, you plan on being around, lends to credibility and when it's about work, it's about work.  People tend to feel more comfortable about doing business with other professionals using a business grade email ... probably for the reasons just mentioned.

If an enterprise that has been around for a bit hasn't taken the time to just get a business email account going, (and it's easy to do and not expensive) what then is the perception of that business taking time for me as a customer?

Choose Pittsburgh Internet Consulting for small business by Blackball Online Marketing for all your digital needs.