Social Media ROI a Requirement for 2011

With social media spending continuing to increase this year, CMOs are being tasked to justify the investment. This is indicated vividly in a new report from Bazaarvoice, a poll of 175 B2C and B2B CMOs across various industries, with 74% of CMOs predicting they will finally tie social efforts to hard ROI in 2011.

Although CMOs will continue to track soft metrics such as popularity and engagement levels, tangible measures are rising dramatically to enable the calculation of realized ROI from social media. Rising dramatically for 2011 is the quantification of conversion and revenue as a result of social media efforts.

The majority of CMOs still don’t know what the ROI is of their social media efforts, with the majority of respondents indicating that they were not getting an ROI or did not know the ROI from various campaigns and channels.

Facebook seems to have the most favorable ROI ratings so far, with 35% indicating superior or average ROI, but with so many not knowing for sure, it’s hard to tell what the results will be until clearer measurement systems are put in place.

As CMOs seek to optimize their spending, doing more with less, it is important to learn which channels reveal the greatest payback. As financial due diligence is a requirement, each marketing investment comes under more scrutiny for ROI measures, and understanding the true bottom-line impact of social media marketing becomes a requirement.

Resources
Alinean's Social Media ROI Calculator can help: http://www.alinean.com/socialmediaroi
(Free to use and see results onlune, registration required to download customized report)

Source: Marketers Optimistic About Finding Social Media ROI (Mashable, February 09, 2011)