Everyone talks about the challenges of measuring the revenue impact of social media, but how are top brands actually doing it? And are they successfully measuring ROI?
My colleague Andrew Jones and I spoke with 16 brands, 38 vendors, 3 agencies and 4 ecosystem contributors, and surveyed 71 social media and analytics practitioners to answer this question and provide pragmatic recommendations.
The result is our “Social Media ROI Cookbook,” which aims to identify and describe the most effective “recipes” for measuring the revenue impact of social media that we have seen adopted to date. Here’s what we learned:
Only 30% of brands we surveyed consider themselves to be “effective” or “extremely effective” at connecting social media to revenue. The top three challenges: Inability to tie social media to business outcomes (56%); Lack of analytics expertise and/or resources (39%); Poor tools (38%).
To be fair, we are in a period of transition: Jeremiah Owyang’s “A Strategy for Social Media Proliferation,” published earlier this year, showed that “companies average 178 corporate-owned social media accounts.” At the same time, the research for this report found that 63% of measurement organizations surveyed have 1-2 people focused on social data. That’s not a healthy ratio.
While revenue is important, it isn’t everything. 84% of survey respondents reported that the primary business impact of social media was not revenue generation, but “insight that helped us meet customer experience goals.”
Altimeter Group identified six primary top-down and bottom-up approaches and developed three case studies that illustrate how organizations measure the impact of social media on revenue. The best practices blend top-down and bottom-up measurement methods to provide a holistic view, informed by granular evidence.
While these six ingredients are consistent, the emphasis each company places on them depends on the nature of their business. There is no “one-size-fits-all” approach. The four most important criteria for determining the measurement mix are:
- Business: the nature and structure of the business
- Product: the nature and type of products or services offered
- Media: type of media being used
- Customer: the nature and type of customer(s)
Where’s it all going? There are four main themes: mobility (to connect the online and offline worlds); digital identity (to connect the consumer wherever s/he may be); More, bigger, faster data to demonstrate as well as predict influence; and, finally, integration, integration, integration: with other social data, with enterprise data and with external data.
The truth is, we’ve only just scratched the surface of what we will be able to know and understand about the impact of social in the years to come, and the process of writing this report emphasized the gaps over and over. But we have to start somewhere. As Ken Burbary, Chief Digital Officer at Campbell Ewald admits in the report, “I feel like we’re all data chemists at this point, trying to put a bunch of stuff into our beakers to see if it works.”
As always, we’d love your ideas, questions and thoughtful disagreement; after all, this is an ongoing project. Please leave a note in the comments, or if you choose to post about the report, we’ll link back to you.
Many thanks to all the ecosystem contributors and colleagues who made this report possible.
Related Posts
- Campalyst, “The Social Media ROI Cookbook,” a study by Altimeter Group
- Adam Singer, Google, writing for TheFutureBuzz: Worth a Read: Altimeter Social Media ROI Cookbook
- Jay Baer, Convince and Convert: Not Tracking Social Media ROI is Your Fault
- Ekaterina Walter, Intel, writing for The Next Web: Measure your brand’s effectiveness with The Social Media ROI Cookbook’s recipes
- Jay Baer, Convince and Convert, and Eric Boggs, Argyle Social: Social Pros Podcast 26: Real People Doing Real Things in Social Media
- Stacy Lukasavitz, Whirlpool: Altimeter finally ‘splains the social media ROI situation and gives you a recipe!
- Barry Levine, CMSWire: Social Media ROI Cookbook Offers ‘Recipes’ for Measurement
- Kyle Lacy, ExactTarget: How Brands are Measuring the Impact of Social Media ROI
- Eric Boggs, Argyle Social: Thoughts on Altimeter’s Social Media ROI Cookbook
- Lisa Joy Rosner, NetBase: The Elephant in the Room: Social Media and ROI
- Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter: Altimeter Report: The Social Media ROI Cookbook
- Keith Paul of EMC: Eating from the Social Media ROI Cookbook
Thanks for the great information! I will definitely share it!
Thanks Kisha!
How we use SEO and social media have changed….
I think everything posted made a lot of sense. However, think
about this, what if you were to create a killer headline?
I mean, I don’t want to tell you how to run your website, however what if you added something that grabbed people’s attention?
I mean The Social Media ROI Cookbook: How Brands Measure the Revenue Impact of Social Media is a little vanilla.
You ought to peek at Yahoo’s home page and note how they create article headlines to grab viewers interested. You might try adding a video or a picture or two to grab people excited about everything’ve written.
Just my opinion, it could bring your website a little livelier.
Ahaa, its good discussion regarding this piece of
writing here at this blog, I have read all that,
so now me also commenting here.
I think the admin of this site is really working hard for his web
page, since here every data is quality based data.
I needed to thank you for this wonderful read!
! I absolutely loved every bit of it. I have you book-marked to check out new stuff you post…
Right now it sounds like Expression Engine is the
top blogging platform available right now. (from what I’ve read) Is that what you’re using on your blog?
This site really has all the information I needed about this subject
and didn’t know who to ask.
Ahaa, its nice conversation regarding this post at this place at this website, I have read
all that, so now me also commenting here.
While the investor and the board may offer technical advice, they generally let the owner control day-to-day management
unless the company becomes suddenly at risk.
But in fact, most venture capital strategies are diversified and, more
important, disciplined in their investment selection process, carefully evaluating each potential deal one by one.
Loans are money that is borrowed and has to be repaid with interest.
What’s up to every single one, it’s genuinely a pleasant for me to pay a quick visit this web
page, it contains important Information. win your boyfriend back
You can definitely see your expertise within the article
you write. The world hopes for more passionate writers such as you who aren’t afraid to say how they believe. All the time follow your heart.