What's the ROI of putting on your pants in the morning? That's the question Salesforce principal social architect Eddie Cliff puts to social nay-sayers who still believe ROI is the primary reason for brands to be involved in social.
Speaking at Social Media Week, Cliff used former Ford head of social, Scott Monty's infamous quote to outline that, while quantitative data might speak more loudly to boardrooms, the benefit of social is often a lot more intangible.
“Its amazing how many companies I meet with that tell me, 'we aren't involved with social today because we can't demonstrate the ROI so we can't secure the investment we need to get started in social,'” Cliff said.
“Its just kind of shocking because your customers are on social, so you should be. They’re having conversations about your brand and you need to be there with them.”
Cliff said that if brands continually try to monetise their social audiences without providing them with entertainment or value, the audience will simply “tune out” and find another brand to follow.
Instead, Cliff said brands can find concrete value by looking at social as a long term objective and judging it on both revenue and also cost-savings metrics.
We Are Social strategist Michael Batistich said that one of his greatest challenges when it comes to demonstrating the value of social is that there is no one tool to “measure everything.”
He said that where brands often fail on social media is by using it as a purely commerical tool, with the aim of driving conversions on every post.
Batistich added that his company are trying to work how often to push conversions without alienating a brand's audience.
“Brands that succeed understand that they need to provide entertainment, they need to add value to the users ...so when the audience is in market, when they're ready to buy then you can drive that conversion,” Batistich said.
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