What makes social media work?

Having measured social media across a range of clients, we have gathered together some collective thoughts on what seems to be working.  And for some of our clients, the social media ROI has been very significant and can offer great value for your marketing money.

Bunch it up
The norm in social media planning is to spread low-level spend across the year.  However this pattern of spend returns a poor ROI: our analysis shows campaigns that have short, sharp bursts of intense activity over a constrained period of time (weeks rather than months) perform much better. These intense campaigns rise above the white noise of social media chatter, drive the cost per click lower, and ultimately deliver a higher return on investment.

Don’t preach, interact
Campaigns that create an interaction with audiences, again, perform better and generate a higher ROI. The campaigns that get the user involved, such as a competition or compelling (i.e. Humourous) messages, are much more likely to move people to purchase. Those that just preach at the consumer tend to perform badly.

Targeting
Social gives you a great opportunity to focus on target consumers and we have found that social is especially effective in reaching niche audiences

And that’s it for now.  We will update as and when we uncover more exciting observations.

If you would like some more reading on social media ROI, you can read our best practice article published with the MRS and IPA here.

Michael Cross

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