Understanding Social Media ROI with LiftMetrix

The first step every business should take in starting their digital presences is creating a website. While creating your webpage may seem an easy step, you have to make sure your site is well designed, easy to navigate, and truly representative of your brand. Your website is often a customers first point of contact with your brand. 81% of consumers do research online prior to making a purchase. It’s very likely that your site isn’t the first one they visited. Because of that, you need to present your site as the easiest to use and the most persuasive.

More than needing your site to be persuasive, you need it to be visually appealing. Poorly designed websites actually cost you sales. 70% of consumers don’t trust a site with sub par design according to a BaseKit poll. There is no point to having a site if it isn’t increasing sales. That’s where Google Analytics come in. They help you understand where people begin on your site, where they drop off, and where they are spending their time. By understanding your sales funnels you can tweak the lesser performing places on your site.

The same way Google Analytics helps you determine ROI and success of your website, application LiftMetrix does the same for your social presence. By telling LiftMetrix your key business objectives, the software can help recommend types of content and ads to drive your social media ROI. LiftMetrix uses Google Analytics data to provide end-to-end ROI measurement solutions. The software uses the data from Google Analytics traffic sources to look at social referrals and uses UTM pararmeters to track social content, both paid and organic.

If a website is the first step in creating a digital presence, social media is the second step. You want to choose platforms that have a high concentration of your target demographics and where you can excel.Having a strong social media presence is what will lead consumers to your website. That is, after all what LiftMetrix is primarily measuring, what traffic your social sites are bringing to your website.

Social media is an emerging ecommerce frontier that cannot be ignored. By the end of 2015, social media was expected to make up roughly $14 billion in online sales and that number will only grow with time. Measuring your online traffic allows you to see what platforms are working and which aren’t. This can help you craft strategies to boost your success on all platforms.

The marketing implications for social media and ecommerce are plain to see. Social media is where selling happens. Whether that is through social media advertisings, coupons, or general awareness. Over 2 billion people (that’s 2/3 of internet users) are active on social media. That should be a big motivator for brands to step up their social media promotion.

There are many ways one can increase online sales. One of my biggest tips to clients is to get personal. Think about whom you are trying to target and create content geared towards them. This involves a mix of promotional and non-promotional content. When I create a social media strategy for a client, I think of the content mix they should be posting based on their audience. Aside from promotional content, it is important to share industry articles, stay on top of relevant trends, and share human-interest pieces at the local or national level-depending on client reach.

Customer service is really important to for social selling. Customers turn to social media for service issue because they see it as a place tor receive a more immediate response. 72% of consumers who reach out to a brand on Twitter expect a response within one hour. Though it can be challenging as a social media manager or small business owner to get to all the requests, it is important to address issue of service on social media. This is often the first place people go to say a website is down or they are having order issues. 

I've tried to pay my @PepcoConnect bill twice in two days and their website has been down both days. Does this mean I don't have to pay?

— Courtney Palazzo (@cpalazzo92) June 21, 2016

It is important to keep in mind that social media marketing is the new word of mouth.  92% of consumers trust a review from a friend or family member. As people expand their network of friends more and more to social media, that gives them tons of potential people to learn about a new product or service. It can be as simple as seeing a friend has liked your Facebook post, retweeted your tweet, or tagged your restaurant on Facebook. These can all be seen as an endorsement of your brand with minimal effort on your part aside from having an active, tagable profile.

Where does LiftMetrix come in? LiftMetrix gives you an extension of limited Google Analytics data. Google Analytics tells you that 40% of your website traffic is coming from Twitter. LiftMetrix software tells you that six post contributed most of that traffic. You can then look at those posts and see what type of content is giving you the best bang for your buck. This is especially helpful with any social media advertisements or paid influencer posts you maybe be using. You want to not only ensure that your company is wisely spending its social dollars (and your time) but that event your organic content is attracting consumers.

Proving the ROI of social media is one of the biggest tasks marketers face. This is especially true in B2B (Business to Business) companies. By being able to show yourself and executives what social media is really bringing to the table in terms of sales and path to purchase not only validates your efforts, but your job role. It’s important to show that the companies money is being spent wisely and by linking your social efforts to your website metrics you can see not only what is paying off, but improve what isn’t.

Though I have never personally worked with LiftMetrix, I appreciate any tool that can help me better shape strategy and tweak content to receive optimal results. If you’ve used this software, please feel free to give your opinion in the comment section of this post.