MarketingLand published a post Sep 26 based on new research that reports that Fewer Than 1% Of Sales Can Be Tracked Back To Social Media.
I wanted to share my comment in that post with my readers and expand on it:
Social Media is a COMMUNICATIONS TOOL Like Your Telephone
Measuring the ROI of social media is like measuring the ROI of your telephone. It is a means of communication which increases brand awareness – but it does not drive direct sales in the way that organic search and ppc do. There is no simple way to measure how many more organic or AdWords clicks your listings get because someone knows about you from social media, or blogs, or any other source.
MEASURING SOCIAL MEDIA
What you can do is measure increased traffic and sales using the social media measurement timelines method explained by Olivier Blanchard @TheBrandBuilder and apply some common sense.
If more people know your name, brand or product, more people are going to click on YOUR listings than will if they never heard of you.
FUTURE OF SEARCH
We need to realize that search is going to be used less as people can get answers on social media and blogs from their friends, family and people they believe are experts. They may click through from those sources, but they may just type in your URL and you can NOT tell where they found you.
That said, nothing YOU CAN EASILY MEASURE converts like search because people search when they are ready to buy.
The bad news about search is that Google knows which keyword phrases are the money phrases and they are systematically taking them away from small business and handing them to their big brand buddies.
This is no secret. Google’s CEO TOLD US that was their intention and every update since then has taken them in that direction. See Aaron Wall’s post on Google Favoring Big Brands and my comment in that post about what I believe they mean.
See this Visual Timeline of Google Updates and Algorithm Changes
WHAT INCREASES SALES
Success comes from consistent quality and service. Businesses that don’t provide them both gradually die and those that DO focus on them consistently grow through personal recommendations which have the highest conversion rate of all – and no – you can’t measure that either.
Get serious or you’re going to go out of business.
Start with How to Get Referrals and Recommendations
There is nothing that converts or that sends you the massive traffic and conversions that Google’s monopoly on search did. NOTHING. So stop wasting time worshipping at the altar of Google hoping that will keep them from eventually taking away YOUR traffic and sales.
Build your business the slow old-fashioned way that has always worked – through actually delivering consistent, awesome service and quality products.
If you’re not sure what you should be doing, find someone who
actually knows what they’re doing and hire them.If you don’t know who that is ASK ME.
If you can’t afford to hire someone ASK ME.
