Marketers often struggle to measure the return on investment (ROI) of their social media efforts. If you’re selling your service or product through social media and can’t figure out how everything you’re posting brings in revenue, that isn’t “dark social”—it’s just value you haven’t measured yet.
France-based social media management company Agorapulse has spent more than a decade helping companies organize their social inboxes, publish content, define trends and cull data. Lately, however, its clients have been looking for ways to prove that the work they’re doing on organic social media actually earns money for their companies.
During the pandemic, Fiona Abrams of fashion firm Delta Galil’s Brayola lingerie brand was receiving a lot of intent-based questions from consumers on social media. What colors and sizes does this come in? What is your return policy? Where do you ship? Abrams took the time to attach UTM codes to the Brayola URLs in her social media replies and began tracking where consumers were coming from and what they were buying.
The time consumed by building and adding all of those codes manually resulted in more than $2,400 worth of labor costs for Brayola. However, the data that came back as a result indicated that Abrams’ work on social media brought in nearly $4,900—making her efforts a nearly $2,500 success.
Adams later approached Agorapulse and noted that if the links from marketing email, social media ads and affiliate programs can all be tracked through software, social media links should be tracked in similar fashion. Not only are marketers leaving some of their teams’ value on the table when they don’t track their work on social media, but few marketing tech firms are currently helping them do so. That’s some lost opportunity for all parties involved.
“Social media is another channel like any other channel, it shouldn’t be treated differently,” said Agorapulse CEO and co-founder Emeric Ernoult. “Unfortunately, the fact that we have looked at social media as just a branding play, or visibility play and have not accepted it as a business-generation play has been very negative to [the marketing] industry, in my opinion.”
Getting There Ahead of Time
The Business to Business Marketing Exchange in Scottsdale, Arizona was packed with companies trying to convince marketers that their products would slice bread and solve all their problems. But only Agorapulse had the guts to say what nobody wanted to hear: most social media marketing doesn’t bring in any dough. CMO Darryl Praill opened his breakout session by letting everyone know that only 10% of brands have someone dedicated to social media.
To back up his point, Praill cited Agorapulse’s own research: out of 10.7 million social media posts (not counting Instagram, which is stingy with its links), only 32% had a link to a website. And out of those 3.4 million links, only 1.9% were trackable. That means marketers are missing out on crucial data that could help them figure out who’s actually interested in their product and who’s just scrolling.
But Agorapulse is here to help. Partnering with companies like Shapeways, they’ve already seen a 12% increase in revenue thanks to better tracking of social media links. And with advances in AI, they’re hopeful that they can detect patterns in social media behavior that could lead to even more sales. Sure, they can’t solve the «dark social equation» entirely, but they’re happy to shed some light on it. As Agorapulse CEO Emeric Ernoult put it: «At least we can track what is trackable.»
Next moves
A year ago, Agorapulse unleashed its social media ROI service into a world that was, shall we say, a bit more optimistic about the economy. Even then, the folks at Agorapulse knew that measuring the business impact of social media was crucial. They surveyed 300 social media marketers, and a whopping 98% said it was either «somewhat» or «extremely» important. But guess what? Only 35% of them were actually doing it. Why? The usual suspects: tools that are too expensive or complicated, not enough buy-in, and not enough time.
Meanwhile, according to a survey of 1,000 global marketers by the HubSpot Blog’s 2022 Marketing Industry Trends Report, social media is the top channel for both B2B (that’s business-to-business, folks) and B2C (that’s business-to-consumer) marketers. And yet, only 11.3% of marketing spending goes toward social media. What gives? Add that to the fact that social media measurement is lacking, and it’s no surprise that 88% of social marketers told Agorapulse they feel like their career growth is being held back. And 77% of them don’t feel like they’re part of the company’s overall business strategy.
