Is Social Media working? This is how to tell

We got a really interesting and common question from a colleague of ours working with a particularly different client.

How will I be able to show my client that his sales are increasing as a result of my efforts?

One of the hardest things to do in the Social Media world is track Social Media efforts to conversions.

For some it’s easy.

For example, content producers for, say, a news site, can easily tie Social Media efforts to their main objective, which is to get more eyeballs.

See, publishers still rely almost entirely on advertisement and sponsorship. Sponsors want to know that people are being exposed to their message.

So the publisher goes in and sets up some simple campaign tracking parameters in Google Analytics and checks referrers from new visitors.

If traffic is going up from sources like Facebook, Twitter, etc, your efforts are moving in the right direction.

Of course, that is still pretty loosely coupled. It would be nice to know what link they clicked to get to your site and who shared it. This requires a little more effort, but is still pretty easy.

But what about more detailed information? What if your advertisement or sponsorship deal is based on clicks and not views? Then you have to take it one step further and see if these new Social Media visitors are converting from browsers to clickers.

Which brings us back to our client who is working with an audiologist.

While I know that utilizing Social Media will build trust and maintain relationships with his patients, my client will of course want to see dollars. How do you deal with this?

Yes, of course. Getting new followers and responding to prospects is fun and exciting, but if it’s not bringing people through the door, then the novelty will quickly wear off.

So, how do you deal with this?

We’ve dealt with it all. From barcodes to cookie tracking and everything in between.

There are two main variables in deciding how to track these conversions:

1. The certainty of the conversion: How certain do you have to be that the conversion came directly from Social Media
2. The expected number of conversions: If there aren’t going to be a lot of conversions, you can do a lot of this manually. If we’re talking hundreds or more a week, you need to invest in an automated system.

But let’s stick with the example at hand.

Without knowing exactly who this client runs his or her business, we can’t give a definitive answer, but there are a number of possibilities.

Clients that charge for consultations can offer free or discounted consultations for liking, following or friending the client on various Social Media channels. Then when the client comes in for the consultation, the prospective patient must verify this by flashing their mobile phone and the receptionist records what network the patient is coming from, either electronically in a spreadsheet or on a piece of paper.

Clients that already give free consultations still probably ask the prospect questions. One of these should include: Where did you hear about us? And note what social channel it was if it was a social channel.

That is a hard tie-in. A client who says “I found you on Twitter” definitely is a conversion.

Another methods is do implement the same type of system on the client’s website.

One great conversion is from visitor to questioner, which happens when a visitor fills out a questionnaire or form online and submits it to the client. One of these form fields should be “Where did you hear about us?”

In this case, there are no actual dollars changing hands, but the you will know that Social Media generated a lead for you.

There are infinite ways to track, and the best way for us to deal with the numerous possibilities is for you to give us concrete examples. If you do that, we’ll tell you how we’d measure results.