Photo credit

A lot of companies have one goal in mind when they pursue any new marketing endeavor: ROI!  But many businesses stay away from Social Media platforms like Facebook because they’re just not sure if their marketing dollars will make a return on their investment. We reached out to a number of companies who use social media marketing, as well as a few other Internet marketing businesses to tell the tale of their success, troubles and ROI with social media marketing.

 

Mike Kawula – Self Employed King

“I love Social Media. It helped my last company rank as the 144th fastest growing on the Inc. 500 and is currently helping me in my new business. My favorite Social Platform for selling is on Twitter. Twitter is a great medium that isn’t as noisy selling wise as Facebook and drives a ton of traffic to my website.   

I use a tool called SocialQuant that helps you build a following of real targeted people around Keywords I choose. What’s great about this tool is it gives you great analytics on what Keywords resonate the best for your followers. You can then take that data and create marketing materials and copy for your website. The trick with Twitter is once you build a following using SocialQuant, put them in list and start interacting with them to build relationships.

It’s social remember, so be social!!!!!”

Marin Perez – Blue Nose Analytics

“We firmly believe that the company that’s going to win in our space is the one that can demonstrate the most empathy with its customers. Social media allows us to to broadcast our authenticity of this belief. It also provides another way to listen to our customers.

As a young startup, we’re always concerned about ROI and our social media efforts reflect this. We run weekly and monthly reports on our social accounts and tie those into larger company goals like qualified leads or ultimate sales.

Social media is still in its early stages, as we’re just beginning to get comfortable with what it means for every person to have a significant
voice. One single tweet can go viral and do irreparable damage to your brand but the converse is also true: a wonderful customer experience can be amplified to a degree that’s worth more than any advertising.”

 

 

Ty Swartz – Chief’s Touch

“We’re a small disabled veteran owned business that supports small and medium businesses with inbound marketing. We teach our customers to identify their customers personas and then develop messages based on each persona while tracking time of day and engagement levels. We use content social selling to increase engagement and build business champions that talk about the company.

By teaching employees at the business to develop messages to specific audience members we are seeing up to 40% increase in engagement and an average of 15% increased purchases. We are currently developing our first white paper for a company that as an increase of 23% in event purchase and 60% increase in event engagement. This translated to nearly $118K over the same event dates from the previous year.”

 

 

 

Megan Light – Gravity Defyer

“We are a comfort shoe company, that focuses on health and wellness. Our shoes have patented technology that helps alleviate pain. We put a lot of energy and resources into marketing every year. A lot of those resources are directed towards Facebook and paid Facebook advertising. Each of our paid Facebook advertisements focuses on an individual shoe and the technology that goes into making each of them.  We have found that social media has been hugely successful for us. It is a major factor in our overall revenue. Lately we have been experimenting with boosted posts. I’ll boost a post for a couple hundred dollars and get a return of 200%.”

 

Jason Brietstein – Brandamos

“Is social media profitable for our business? Yes. We receive inquiries from other businesses that have participated in social media, but their strategy is lacking and want consultation to see if they can boost their social media channels. Often our social media efforts lead to other business opportunities as well such as for our web design and SEO services.

Social media shouldn’t be an endeavor that you do until it works. You should think about what type of content you want your brand to represent and then create a stream of content that reflects that brand. Don’t just post to post. The more time you put into the strategy portion the more profitable your social media ROI will be. You want to follow and engage with like minded audiences so that new like minded audiences will find you.”

 

3Lisa Chu – Black N Bianco

“Social media is one of the greatest platforms to market my business online. My main social media objective is to share fun valuable content. From my own personal experience great content will be naturally shared by my followers. It also has the potential to reach new followers and customers. I also use social media as a way to communicate with my target audience. I encourage our followers to contribute their own content, ideas and questions.

Getting involved on social media takes time, dedication and real planning. With the help of social media I am able to serve my customers more effectively and on a personal level. Due to social media my business was able to achieve a 35% increase in customer satisfaction and a 55% increase in a repeat customers. Social media is one of the most important aspects of my business and I cannot see my brand growing without it.”