Retailers Can Measure Social Media ROI. Or Decide It’s An Expense.

You know, you have to hand it to retailers. They pull hard-won traffic into their stores, then transform those bodies into card-swiping buyers happy with the products they’re purchasing and the experience they just had.  

If you think it’s easy, we suspect you haven’t done it. It’s tough and getting tougher.

Consequently, moving retailers (excluding the giants) into social media campaigns can be a challenge. And when we get to the conversation about ROI, it can be, well, stimulating. Here are elements of the discussions we have with our clients about social media ROI.

1. There should be an ROI goal. Even if we know the goal may be unattainable in the short term, the effort should be measured against clearly stated objectives.  
2. ROI goals should be set before the campaign starts. They may need to be altered as the effort proceeds, but predetermination gives a foundation to work from. 
3. Costs have to be measured.  While social media doesn’t stack up the bills like a TV buy, there are real expenses involved. That means tools and staff time involved have to be accounted for.  
4. Depending on a number of issues, including the client’s culture, we may change the rules and state a social ROI is not yet relevant. In that case we would recommend determining that social is a cost. Then we apply marketing objectives such as growth in brand awareness, costs per lead, reduced or truncated customer service calls, increase in new credit applications, Facebook “likes,” or others.

Listen. Putting an ROI on social isn’t easy, especially in retail where communications are often supportive of that week’s sales – period.  But even the effort to establish the ROI will provide deep insight to a company’s demands and expectations. And that’s always a good thing. 

Where do you weigh in?

Sandra Matthews, Looking at things from both sides now.