We all agree that Brands should allways try to find new ways to interact with their customers. The economic recession hasn’t make things easier but it also offers opportunities for the strong to come out stronger and for the small to grow faster.

Does an investment in Social Media have a positive ROI and the most important question how can someone measure the ROI of participating in Social Media? This is a tricky question. You can, sometimes, measure the ROI of advertisement in TV (did you know that only 18% of TV campaigns has a positive ROI?) but social media is a different thing that can’t be measured by traditional ways. Sometimes its more about customer satisfaction.
 

There are some pretty good examples of big companies exploiting the potential of Social Media to become even bigger and some rather small companies that use the Social Media to advance.

The golden rule of a brand’s involvement in Social Media is that it must offer something of a value to its users - potential buyers - customers. Sometimes its just entertainment, other times its information. So let’s look at three examples of successful Brands in Social Media.

Successful Story 1
Dell is a very good example. The company sold computers worth of 3 million dollars through Twitter. Ιt really is an amazing example. How do you define the ROI when the cost is 0 dollars and the return is 3 million dollars? DellOutlet account in Twitter has now 1.425.968 followers in Twitter!

What DellOutlet offers to its followers? Simple. The opportunity to be the first to know what Dell offers in a lower price. What it offers to Dell? A huge channel to potential buyers.

Successful Story 2
Lenovo on the other hand was able to achieve cost savings by a 20% reduction in call center activity as customers go to community website for answers. According to a Forrester research “Cost per interaction in customer support averages $12 via the contact center versus $0.25 via self-service options.” So for Lenovo it was a relatively easy task. What is the cost of your call center? And if you don’t have one, wouldn’t be a great idea to create a place for your customers to support each other?

Successful Story 3
BlendTec increased its sales 5x by running the often humorous “Will it Blend” Videos on YouTube blending everything from an iPhone to a sneaker. BlendTec official channel in YouTube has some 4.224.062 views and 214936 subscribers.

Who would imagine that the official channel of a company manufacturing blenders (!) would have over 200.000 subscribers?

So can you measure the ROI in Social Media? The answer is yes. And for those concerned about the cost the answer is another question “What is the cost of doing nothing?”
Check out the video and do not hesitate to contact us if you have more questions about how your Brand should get involved to Social Media.

Source: Socialnomics