The return on investment question is one that continues to challenge social media marketers. How do you define it? How do you track it? Is it even possible?
Dell has long been a leader in showing results for their social media efforts.
In his recent presentation at our BlogWell conference in Austin, Texas, Dell’s Adam Brown offered a few ideas on how Dell is doing it:
- Look at social media as a lead generator. Dell found that the TechCenter community was a place where the company could observe a positive correlation between people talking about Dell products and then making purchases. This community has become a place where the company is able to demonstrate return on investment and lead generation.
- Take user-generated content and build it into other platforms. Dell has worked with different vendors to put a rating and reviews system on many of the company’s different social platforms. The company found that people who read customer ratings and reviews for Dell products are 138% more likely to make a purchase.
- Listen to what your customers are saying. Dell recently opened a Social Media Command Center where people are watching the 22,000 conversations taking place about the company, tracking the sentiment and pointing different departments toward these conversations.
Watch Adam’s presentation:
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I love that there's clear, unambiguous metrics from an organization as engaged in social media as Dell is re: its ROI on same, that's great!
Well, this is a good turn for good old Dell, the tip-top maximum computer company in sales and also touch bar in safe home & office computing. They also have the largest budget, which is why they're probably ahead with the cloud and social blogging.
Adam's definitely right about one thing – proving ROI is the key to opening up those big juicy media budgets for social media initiatives.
Some interesting take aways in this presentation, he didn't seem to get into specifics about how ROI was actually measured though
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