No, this isn’t a maths lesson, so you can put your abacus away. Social media metrics have nothing to do with brightly-coloured counting beads, but they are about measuring.
And when you successfully measure how well your social media is performing, and why, then you can save your abacus for counting beans (that’s dollars, not jelly beans, although we wouldn’t say no to some jelly beans either).
If you’re looking for ROI from your social media, then you need to make sure you’re making the most of your metrics. If you’re paying for ads on social media, you need to get into the nitty gritty and make sure things are performing as well as they should be.
Yes, you might be seeing an obvious increase in your likes, comments and shares, but how is this turning into growth for your business? Because, ultimately, you want to make sure your hard-earned cash is being spent to bring about more leads, right?
To get you started, here are two important metrics for measuring ROI:
Landing page views
Whether you’re looking for leads, sign-ups or purchases, landing page views are valuable because they show you when someone has actually gone to your website. A common mistake is putting too much emphasis on link clicks (as a rough guide, for every three link clicks you get one landing page view).
A link click means someone has clicked on a link in your ad. It doesn’t necessarily mean they have visited your website. For instance, they may have clicked on the link by accident, and then closed the page before it loads.
Hence why landing page views (when someone clicks and fully loads up the website) – and ultimately cost per landing page view – is a much more accurate metric. The cost per landing page view is how much you are spending per visit to your page, and you want this to be as low as possible.
Lead Metrics – defining your lead
Secondly, it’s important to define the ‘lead’ that you’re measuring and how valuable it is to your business. For example, two lead sources that you may want to measure are ‘subscribe to our newsletter’ and ‘contact us’.
But, if you only write a monthly newsletter and it doesn’t have a strong call to action, subscribers may not be the most valuable leads for you. Whereas, if someone fills in a contact us form with their name, email and phone number, this may be a more valuable lead for your business.
So, no matter it may be, figure out the quality of the lead that you’re measuring and what you’re willing to pay for that lead. It might cost three times as much to get one ‘contact us’ form, but if it’s more valuable, then it’s worth it.
And that’s just the beginning…
Keep your eyes peeled for our next blog where we’ll share our top tips on getting better ROI from your Facebook ads.
So you can keep that jelly bean jar topped up (you’re welcome).
