I love executives who want to talk about ROI on marketing and especially social media (all sarcasm intended). Unless you are doing direct response marketing, ROI is an elusive topic at best and impossible at worst. My first question is always “what period of time do you want to measure that over, because ultimately, the time span is the biggest factor in the equation”. With social media, its even more elusive because you are helping people to find you – to build know, like and trust – without you interacting with them. I asked a group of my LinkedIN connections for their experiences with social media results. Over a few posts I’ll share the impactful ones. Like the one below…

From small, global software developer – An IT manager from a municipal government read my SEO optimized blog article on it.toolbox.com, followed a link to our website, downloaded a whitepaper, received a series of automated lead nurturing emails and personal emails from a sales person but never actually took any of our calls. Nevertheless, due to a odd combination of marketing, Web 2.0 and lead nurturing technology, we were added to the vendor list for an RFI.

So.. the articles, emails and website provided a way for a potential customer to seek out a solution (You may say this is simply electronic drip marketing, but in the end, it is content based publicly published information, which is social media) – ultimately, it gave the prospect a map. What’s the ROI on a map or a GPS? I know I don’t know, but I am sure I don’t want to be in an unfamiliar place without one. Do you have a story to share? Please do.


Link to original post