No matter how much the industry evolves the primary objective will always be achieving a high Return Of Investment. It underpins every marketing decision you make. The higher the better! From marketing managers to senior executives increasing your ROI is a common goal shared by all. Could social data help you achieve this fundamental objective?
On paper, calculating ROI could not be simpler: (Gain of investment – Cost of investment) / Cost of investment. However, there are a few qualitative factors that could influence ROI: human resources, time invested, intangible benefits, etc. What part does social data play in all this? Look at a few examples of how social data can contribute to balancing your ROI.
Market Research
Historically, market research has been based on the use of traditional methods that required large investments of time and money to carry out surveys, interviews, focus groups, etc. Such methods of insights gathering ultimately slowed down the decision-making process and ate through team budgets relatively quickly.
Today, we have one of the most powerful data sources at our fingertips: social data. Social data has become easily accessible via a variety of social networks, waiting to be extracted, and gathered in hope to provide valuable consumer insights. Once extracted such findings are transformed into audience and segment focused actionable insights, that too all within a few hours. As a result, significantly lowering the cost of your investment whilst increasing your ROI!
Influencer Marketing
A large proportion of marketers are still manually identifying relevant influencers for their clients and brands, negatively influencing their ROI. Not only would such efforts require a lot more time but also introduce an element of personal taste and non-objectivity, skewing the perception of an ideal influence resulting in less effective campaigns.
The use of social data would help eliminate both these issues as influencer identification (macro, micro and niche) would be done at scale for defined audiences and segments reducing the time invested whilst maintaining an element of objectivity throughout. Influencers will be shortlisted based on authentic affinity between the influencer and their community along with their uniqueness.
Market Acquisition
Understanding your industry landscape and competition has always required large budgets and time. Established consultancies and specialized agencies may offer market share information and competitor analysis to inform your strategies however it always comes at a hefty cost.
Social data simplifies the process by allowing you to gather the same information if not more at a fraction of the cost and time. Embracing the use of social data points allows you to access information of your own social market share, the actual size of your community and untapped audiences or segments. Not only do you benefit from lower costs and less time invested but you are also able to significantly slash your campaigning costs by directing paid campaigns at the most relevant customers or prospects.
Creativity and Brainstorming
Personalization is no longer a ground-breaking approach, however, hyper-targeting and relevancy is on the rise. Unlocking audience personality traits, interests, motivations, needs, affinities and values allows for hyper-targeting and increased relevance but can also help shape the perfect brainstorming sessions.
Artificial intelligence and other cognitive computing systems, such as IBM Watson, have the power to provide you with the necessary data and insights to adapt your content strategy to the different audiences and segments your brand is interested in engaging.
The ROI of doing nothing
Several organizations are spending huge amounts of money on social data-informed product and service development. If you are not willing to invest in understanding your audience better, just remember your competitors are!
These are only a few scenarios in which social data can help you increase your ROI. Are you already harvesting the power of social data? Use Audiense Insights as your stepping stone into the world of social data, create your FREE account today.
