ROI – Benefits from social media can be measured?
I’m back from the long break, I hope everyone is ready for the next topic, ROI. We had previously discussed about social medias and risks, now we will focus on Return in investment or ROI. ROI basically mean what we get back from using social medias in this case. It is hard to crunch the benefits/loss from social medias in to numbers so ROI from social medias are not always clear.
Albert Hoitingh had given 5 main points about ROI.
- Innovation – Creativity, share know-how, and customers opinions.
- Engagement – With customers, co-workers including your boss and people who work under you.
- Increase productivity – Reduce information overload, better teamwork, and less time finding information.
- Less expenses – Less communication cost, less operational cost, and less customer support cost.
- Improved revenue – Improve branding and more customers.
Let look at Sony for example. Sony is a large organization that their business involve around electronic devices. Pauline Amerson, marketing manager from Sony electronic, said in DMA2011 that social medias is a source of information that use customers words and behaviors for marketing plan. Sony VAIO also plan for marketing change from portraying how powerful the devices are to be style, design, and color. They made their products emphasize on color. Which attract more people and have better sale.
Another example from Sony is their reader. They have monitor their social medias and the word “mom” comes out a lot so, they rework their campaign to focus on mom. Later, Nielsen research shown that the one that buy e-reader the most are women aged 55+(30% of all users) or in other word “mom”.
We can calculate ROI in many ways however, the main point is that we get more profit. As for Sony example, they also got more sales(more profits) from social medias. The investment on social medias sound interesting right? Not only the sales that help you improve ROI. If using social medias can replace meetings with the use of Wiki and blogs. All the meeting cost will improve your ROI too.
Interesting read
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2202307/Social-Media-ROI-How-To-Define-a-Strategic-Plan
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-return-on-investment/
http://socialmediatoday.com/firebelly/645986/roi-social-media-infographic
References:
To gain profit from an investment, it is best to do market research. In case of Sony, they did a good market research to know who the readers are. However, doing market research do add more investment into the ROI. It is also interesting that a lot of components such as research do add up the the investment beside people and technology. What is your opinion on the investment of research, is it something every organization should be involved in?
I didn’t point out clearly but what Sony did was “Monitor”. Sony monitor their social medias and see what is going on right now. They looking for new trends from their customers. This is a good way to support their customers by producing what they actually want and market to the right audiences. In my opinion, it is a good way to make your customers happy. Customers are happy because they get what they want and Sony get their money so, it’s a win-win situation. I hope that answer your question.
Cheers,
Prapat W.
Great post Prapat, you’ve highlighted a key feature of identifying ROI for social media (and any business initative), that is, the need to measure. It sounds like Sony have setup strong analytics to understand more about their current and potential customers through the social media channel. I wonder if they have similarly strong measurements of how successful the changes are in order to quantify the return on investment?
In the article that I’ve read about Sony they didn’t say exactly how Sony measure the ROI however, Sony get more customers and their sales are a lot better. I believe the marketing team from Sony decided to change way of marketing according to the data they get from their social medias to improve their profit or better ROI.
Cheers,
Prapat W.
Hi Paprat.
I like this data mining technique sony used by searching the word “mom”.I am sure that approach can identify good marketing strategies. Although I am not using Albert Hoitingh in my reference, I’ve found similar R(returns) comming from E2.0 I(investments) which means the authors are in some how sincronized.
Charles
(http://charlestontelles.wordpress.com/)
Hi Charles, I’ve read your post and your article is very good. It is a good data coming from a person related to the company directly. What you have point out about ROI are also pretty straight forward.
Cheers,
Prapat W.
Hi Prapat,
Good example of a very clear ROI and 5 strong points.
I disagree with you however that wiki’s and blogs will replace meetings, we still need some form of instant communication whether that be a chat session, VOIP or video messaging.
- Shaun
Actually, I didn’t think Wiki and Blog will replace meeting either. The meeting is important but we can reduce the number of times that we have to go to meetings or even decrease the time for each meetings. People don’t actually like to go to a meeting because, the meeting is almost always stressful. Some of the topic in meeting can actually talk and discuss via Wiki but many serious stuff that often required a decision from the executives should be settle in a formal meeting.
Cheers,
Prapat W.
Hi Prapat~
it is clear that social media can bring benefits for ROI.As you mention to meeting can be replaced by social media that can save time and cost on ROI. I like you illustrate five mainpoint about ROI that appear simple and strong in your blog. kiki^^
Thank for your feedback Kiki. The ROI from social medias is a hard concept as we can’t clearly see it. I hope that I give you enough information to get some ideas about it.
Cheers,
Prapat W.
Hi PraptW, you did give me some new idea for ROI.i also know your opinion about ROI form your postt.Thank for sharing information. kiki^^
No problem Kiki. If my post can make you know more about ROI and social medias that will be very good.
Prapat W.