Marketers are now investing significantly more in their social media efforts, with increases of 6% - 18% being predicted in marketing budgets within five years, according to B2B marketing tools provider Alinean.
The company's latest research found that a good ROI from social media marketing tends to be driven by the achieved 'level of engagement', and that engagement can be driven by a set of best practices the company calls the 'Social Media Hierarchy of Needs'.
The level of social media engagement - that is, the level of ability to attract and dialogue with followers, advocates, influencers and readers - drove the capture of new prospects, improved existing customer loyalty and provided a platform for collaborative innovation.
These engagements eventually led to incremental revenue opportunities and cost savings, the key benefits in the realisation of ROI.
"Our research looked at engagement success and how it led to tangible benefits and ROI, revealing that marketers who implemented a layered, hierarchical set of engagement best practices, including content, campaigns, monitoring and collaboration, achieved superior ROI results," explained Tom Pisello, chairman and founder for Alinean.
Pisello's resultant 'Social Media Hierarchy of Needs' includes:
Along with the hierarchical tiers, the research indicated two key additional supporting best practices, highlighting the importance of:
"In order to drive the most effective engagement and the highest ROI from social media efforts, marketers need to implement each successive tier of the Social Media Hierarchy of Needs," concluded Pisello.
The company's full Social Media ROI white paper and research findings have been made available for free download from the Alinean web site - click here.
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