Should Social Media Marketing Campaigns Even Be Measured?

I read a post from Jake over at 10e20 blog recently with a promising title, “Social Media Marketing is NOT a Direct Response Channel.”  I could not agree more.  Jake’s point that you should not expect social media to compete with your direct response channels, like pay per click, is 100% valid.

Social media is not a switch that you turn on and off like a light.  Engaging in a social media campaign is a commitment to a new form of communicating with your customers.  And that can pay huge dividends.

But here’s where I disagree.  In the post, Jake writes, “Events in Social spheres are sometimes tough to track and tie-back, but more importantly, Social is not about individual sales nor is it about the individual.” He also says that, while it’s possible to track certain things, doing so can be more expensive and time consuming then the campaign itself.

Some truth to that, but at Ignite we recognize that the budgets that fund our client’sROI is a must social media marketing campaigns could be used for any number of other tactics. And, while this business is in its infancy, pretty soon we’re going to be expected to justify the existence of our budgets.

Social media marketing is powerful stuff. I’ve seen it repeatedly. And tracking the footprints of something you don’t control is hard to do.  That’s why we’re building new systems to do just that.   I hope everyone in the social media marketing field is doing the same thing.

It won’t be long before the early adopters turn to us and say, “Why should we fund you next year?”

We’re working hard to make sure we have our answers.  You should too…



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