Social Media ROI: A New Marketing Science

photo: Chris Spira

If you have been following the evolution of social media, you know that the one biggest issue on everyone’s mind is how to measure ROI. I suppose that any new “science” bring skepticism, yet in order to effectively measure ROI, we need to approach social media as a new science.

The Science of Marketing

Growing up in the direct marketing industry beginning in the mid 1980′s, I was never tasked to prove that direct marketing was effective. Instead, we were ingrained with the idea that our jobs as effective marketers hinged on our ability to employ the best techniques with the right prospects. And so we worked like mad scientists, testing and evaluating, always looking for that additional something we could add to elicit a response from our target audience.

The Science of Social Media Marketing

From my perspective, social media marketing is not all that different. When you approach social media marketing through the discipline of a science:

• You understand that every element plays a part in influencing your outcome, knowing it is meaningless to study engagement across the board
• Your role as a marketer is to learn exactly what efforts produce results
• Your marketing strategy then embraces what works and lets go of what doesn’t
• You should never become complacent in testing new techniques as what works best will be a constantly changing landscape