As B2B marketers, we all love a retweet, like or +1 for brand awareness - but what use are they if we can't prove their effect on the bottom line? It’s time to understand your social media strategy, and what effects it has on your B2B marketing results, sales pipeline and overall ROI.

1. Still scratching your head about social media ROI?
You’re not alone!
With only 8% of companies saying they can actually determine return on investment from social activity, it’s clearly a subject that’s still stumping the B2B marketing community.
As marketers, we all love a retweet, like or +1 for brand awareness, what use are they if we can’t prove their effect on the bottom line?
Follow our 3 step guide to measuring your social media ROI and impress the rest when you can say you’ve finally cracked it.
Set your goals and understand where your opportunities are
1
Track your campaigns
Report, analyse and rethink
measuring your
social media ROI
Follow our 3 step guide to
2
3
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2. Set your goals and understand where your opportunities are
Over 85% of businesses use social media in some way, but only 14% can tie revenue to their activity. With all this confusion, it’s time to go back to basics.
The first thing you should ask yourself (and it’s often overlooked) is “what are my goals for social activity?”
Do these goals link back to your business goals? If your goal for the quarter is X number of leads, set how many of these you want to come through social channels.
Review your existing performance to establish your benchmark, then set your goals based on improving those numbers.
3 steps to measuring your social media ROI
Only 14%
of companies can tie revenue to social media activity
Step #1
www.leadforensics.com
The next thing you need to ask yourself is “where do my prospects spend their time?”
Understanding what platforms your prospects are using will help you better target your social campaigns.
And although Facebook and Twitter are the go-to choice for most companies, it’s actually LinkedIn that comes out top for B2B lead generation with over 80% of leads generated through social media coming from LinkedIn.
Over 80%
of leads generated come from LinkedIn

3. Measuring likes, shares or retweets gives a great indication of the buzzword of the moment – engagement. But it doesn’t always translate to leads or sales activity, and definitely won’t help you calculate your ROI.
The key to successfully measuring your social media ROI is simple – have a clear set of factors and stick to them across every channel. As we mentioned earlier, if your goal is x number of leads from social channels – what tools and processes will help you measure this?
Link shortening tools and unique landing pages are a great way to start…but they won’t separate website visitors from your sales –ready leads. And when 98% of website visitors don’t enquire, it’s crucial you have a system in place that can help you identify who is ready to buy, and track them back to specific social campaigns.
When you post links to social platforms, Lead Forensics allows you to track which businesses have clicked on that link and what they’re viewing on your website, and is a great way of tracking back to the source.
And by being able to see what they’re viewing on your site, you’ll know if they’re ready to buy and can track these leads back to specific campaigns - accurately attributing revenue when they convert.
Step #2
Track your campaigns
3 steps to measuring your social media ROI
www.leadforensics.com
“Lead Forensics allows us to go beyond standard analytics and understand who our customers are, their preferences and their buying behaviour. “
Andrew Nicholson (B2B Marketer of the year ’11), Sodexo Prestige
“Lead Forensics isn’t just about how many people have clicked, it’s about who clicked. There’s so much insight you can gain from marrying up Lead Forensics with your social and digital channels.“
Callum Gill, Marketing Manager, DRP Group

4. Once you have your goals and tools in place, it’s time to actually calculate your ROI. Build out a social dashboard that takes into account 4 factors – your goals, your measurements, your benchmarks and your costs. And use these 4 factors to feed into your ROI calculations.
And don’t forget, it’s how you analyse those results that will really affect your bottom line. What are your best performing platforms? What content are you sharing that gains the most engagement?
The key thing with measuring social ROI isn’t just to prove value of your campaigns, but to improve and increase their worth over time. And when over one-third of global B2B buyers use social media to engage with their vendors, it’s clear that, as a channel, it’s not just about you building brand awareness anymore...
Social media is becoming less about broadcasting and more about inputting to an ongoing conversation. And with the current social media user count at over 1 billion, that’s a very big conversation!
Rethinking your social strategy is all about getting to know your audience and engaging with them in a meaningful way that makes you their go to choice for knowledge, advice and (most importantly!) business.
Step #3
Report, analyse and rethink
3 steps to measuring your social media ROI
www.leadforensics.com
Over 1/3
of B2B buyers use social media to engage with vendors
Lead Forensics has already helped many B2B clients solve their social media ROI challenges. By providing unparalleled insight and tracking capabilities you can uncover who your website visitors are, identify when they’re ready to convert and track every sale back to the source.
Arrange your free demo and trial today by calling 0207 206 7293

5. 98% OF B2B WEB VISITORS
DON'T ENQUIRE...
...WE TELL YOU
WHO THEY ARE!
Uncover your anonymous website visitors
About Lead Forensics
Identify the businesses that visit your website but don't enquire. Access full information about those businesses including their business name and contact details.
Action leads before your competitors
Gain the competitive advantage with real time alerts when businesses of interest visit your site, and automatically assign leads to your sales team to action immediately.
Understand your prospects online journey
Track the end to end journey of the businesses visiting your website, so you can gain insight into what they are interested in.
Arrange a free demo and start your free trial today. Call 0207 206 7293
Turn your anonymous website visitors into sales leads, convert new business opportunities before your competitiors and increase your online ROI.