Measuring Social Media ROI … For Real

Social Media as a marketing and advertising medium is clearly here to stay.  But, the days are numbered for the fluffly metrics that we currently use to measure its ROI.

In business, the single question everyone want to know is -- Did the marketing efforts lead to an actual sale?

Frankly, the way we're currently answering the question for social media — namely, assigning guesstimated values to fans, followers, retweets, and mentions — makes a mockery of our marketing efforts in general.

Instead of trying to assign a meaningless values fans or followers, why not try actually trying to measure sales the same way traditional marketing & advertising mediums do? 

Here are some suggestions for measuring social media results . . . for real:

• Provide a coupon code for exclusively to your Fans or Followers
• Promote a limited-time, product-specific discount to your Fans or Followers
• Give your Fans & Followers a special fans-only customer service telephone number for all of their purchases, questions or feedback.
• Showcase links to sales-ready landing pages
• Invite fans or followers to sign-up to receive a special white paper, subscribe to an e-newsletter, attend a free webinar, etc. Each lead allows you to then track any future sales activity to the initial social media effort.

Have other ideas or suggestions for measuring social media ROI? Please email them to us at comments@third-person.net.

Batteries Plus Launches A New High Quality Creative Ad Campaign That's Surprisingly Affordable -- Created by Third Person, Inc.

MILWAUKEE, WI –  When Batteries Plus decided they needed some new life in their franchise advertising, they turned to Third Person, Inc., the Milwaukee advertising agency with expertise in franchise advertising and branding. 

"When we got the call from Batteries Plus that they were looking for something out of the ordinary for their branding, we knew we had an idea that they'd love," said Michael Caughill, Owner of the Milwaukee advertising agency.  "As it turned out, we were right."

In a creative shoot out, Batteries Plus chose Third Person over some of the Midwest's top advertising agencies.

So what was this winning idea?

"We like to think of it as the way crowd sourcing should be done in advertising," said Caughill.  "Instead of asking the general public to create the campaign idea, we're using their content within our creative framework."

The results are compelling.  The franchise name, the most important asset of a franchise organization, is front and center through out the entire commercial. Plus, the total campaign costs are jaw-droppingly low – over 50% less than their previous production totals.

"We didn't have to shoot anything," said Caughill.  "And, since people posting their videos to YouTube never expect to get anything for their videos, we were able to obtain the rights to our chosen videos pretty inexpensively. But the best part is that the results are top notch.  They're fun and professional at the same time."

Batteries Plus is already seeing results too.  Franchise owners are raving over the new spots, and one of their early commercials was discussed fervently on certain blogs.

"They've never had commercials that attracted this kind of attention.  We're happy that we could deliver this to them," said Caughill.

Click here to view other television commercials created by this Milwaukee advertising agency specializing in franchise advertising.