Show Me The Money!
Show me the money! Marketing strategy, including social media marketing strategy, must be tied to revenue, or risk becoming irrelevant to the business. The metrics we need to associate social media marketing activities to the desired business result (revenue) include: conversion rate, lead generation, and inquiries. Notice these activities represent late to early stages of the marketing funnel, which in effect provides a nested set of metrics. Why focus on these three (traditional) metrics as opposed to “likes” or “community engagement”?
Most business organizations include a sales team, often rewarded by commission. Typically the Sales organization has a strong voice within management, and this directly influences the perception of marketing activities. If marketing is not clearly helping sales to drive revenue, it risks losing support – or worse. On the other hand, if marketing activities are clearly and visibly tied to revenue, then support, budget, and commitment will improve.
The marketing team may certainly track social media engagement, but these should be viewed as a means, not the end. Engagement metrics are well and good, but they are essentially marketing’s functional measurement of activity – not results. Marketing results begin to become relevant to business leadership when inquiries from customers and prospects are received (and of course qualified by marketing) and become bona fide leads. Lead generation (upper-funnel) is a key metric, one that binds Marketing and Sales together. Conversion rate is a key sales metric, but it should be shared by marketing as well. After all, the end game is revenue. Show me the money!











