3 Ways to Find Out if Your Social Media Marketing is Getting Your More Members

The concept of return on investment is very simple. You make an investment and you get something in
return. To create an effective marketing campaign the return must be higher than the investment. The
problem with social media marketing is it can be difficult to identify what exactly the return is in concrete
terms. This is particularly true for membership websites which your social media marketing to not only get
new members but also to enhance brand exposure and promote content.

The fundamental key of identifying your social media ROI is twofold. The first is to not leave anything out of
the investment side. For example, you must include all the time you spend managing communities on social
networking websites and developing advertising materials. Keep in mind that your time includes a variety of
overhead items such as insurance, payroll, public relations, testing, and strategizing. On the other end of the
spectrum you need to identify exactly what results you want to receive and whether they should be included
in your ROI.

For example, results like website visitors, newsletter sign-ups, comments, and followers can be beneficial
that they should not be considered part of your return because you cannot attach specific dollar amounts to
it. To develop an effective ROI equation, it is critical to identify results relevant to your business specific to
generating income.

The Easy Method

The easiest way to develop an ROI equation for your social media marketing is to focus on a direct selling
strategy. Essentially, all your social media marketing should be focused on getting potential members to sign
up and become pain members. This strategy of determining ROI is straightforward and easy to set up with
web analytics tools. Many tools can be easily integrated with your WordPress membership website and
specific membership website plug-in such as Magic Members.
The potential problem with the easy method or direct method is if all your marketing is not direct (which it
rarely is on social media). To overcome this many people will consider indirect metrics such as leads, sales
over the period of the campaign, or other marketing channels being influenced by social media.

The Sharing ROI

Since the easy method is not going to be the most accurate method, it is important to identify indirect
returns you value as a website owner. One of the most common indirect methods to consider is sharing or a
measurement of brand metrics. For example, the number of shares, mentions, or comments can be
measured quantitatively. You can use these metrics to identify correlations with your volume of sales. If your
sales and sharing metrics are moving in unison then there is at least a correlative relationship, if not a causal
relationship. One way to test this is by changing how you market on social media, measuring the indirect
results, and seeing if a correlative relationship remains. If so, then sharing may be an effective way to
measure your social media marketing ROI.

Segmentation by Channels

The final way to easily find out your social media marketing ROI and to determine if social media is driving
more members to your membership website is by segmenting your sales based on channels or touch points.
For example, you can look at your number of members which were influenced or a part of your social media
marketing campaign, even if they didn’t arrive at your website directly from social media platforms. This is
one of the more difficult ways to gauge your return on investment because it can be difficult to track users across multiple channels, but if done effectively will allow you to determine an accurate return on
investment.

Unfortunately, the perfect method for developing your return on investment equation for social media
doesn’t yet exist because so many indirect factors must be included. When determining if social media
marketing is best for your WordPress membership website the key is selecting indirect variables which have
the highest correlation with sales and including them in your equation.