I think the debate about the ROI of social media has really gone off the deep end. It always seems to be a hot topic at pretty much every marketing conference held nowadays.
On one hand you have people who insist you can’t really measure the business value of consumer conversations on the Web, while others who say social media insights will never be taken serious until they can be aligned with a company’s bottom line.
I believe many of the people who throw the white towel in on the ability to understand the value and measure social media are not looking at the problem or the solution the right way. One of the fun challenges of working in the social media analytics field is helping companies figure out how to learn and apply knowledge from what consumers say online about their brand, products and competitors to strengthen customer relationships and ultimately grow their businesses.
This can be a particularly sticky issue for many companies, and in particular global brands with growing needs to integrate social media data across multiple divisions of their organization, such as brand management, customer service, market research, marketing, corporate communications, and product public relations, to name a few. Notice I said ‘data’ not ‘insights.’ If you cannot convert insights into data, there is no real value to a brand. Smart marketers don’t monitor the Web, they learn from it. There’s a big difference.
The on-demand availability of this new stream of consumer intelligence being pumped into the offices of corporate America today is one of the biggest reasons social media measurement has become a white hot industry over the past few years. Static consumer data owned by market researchers for years now has a dynamic quality and is leapfrogging its way across many parts of an organization.
This trend is presenting some unique challenges for companies as they grapple with ways to convert learnings into actionable data within their corporate environment. It’s a fascinating exercise to see how different companies in different industries are approaching this new challenge. Depending on your job description, a consumer sharing information about your brand can either be viewed as extremely valuable or mostly insignificant.
In other words, even though one disgruntled customer could trigger an immediate response from someone in the corporate PR department, that same consumer would barely attract any attention in the product marketing or market research groups unless the information can be substantiated as part of much larger issue or trend that will impact whether or not the company will alter its marketing strategy or product development. And that’s not to say that companies should not listen to what one person says. We’ve all witnessed how a single voice can inflict damage on a brand, but rather it underscores the point that not all social media is equal in the eyes of a company.
While most of us would argue that 50 consumers complaining about a brand is substantial, you have to first figure out if that is 50 people out of 100 like-minded individuals or 50 people out of 1 million to gauge the real impact on this information. This is at the heart of how many brands are approaching the argument about an ROI model for social media.
There are two schools of thought about whether social media data should be analyzed on its own merits or integrated into existing Web analytical models used by most brands and interactive marketing agencies. It’s a debate that continues to pick up momentum and plays into the social media ROI debate. I’m a big believer in social media data integration with other forms of research. It’s where smart brands and agencies are now placing their bets.
As always, I welcome your feedback and comments.
