Social media shows no signs of slowing down, and to keep up, companies are experimenting with new methods of using social media for digital marketing and advertising. One of the most successful ways brands use social media to interact with customers is through social media promotions, like sweepstakes, contests, and giveaways. Sure, these promotions look pretty easy to set up and run, but you need to make sure you set up your promotions with your objectives in mind.
To help you get started, here are three simple steps to measure and maximize the ROI of your Facebook promotions so that you can win fans and influence people.
Step 1: Set Your Key Performance Indicators
Early on, decide on your Key Performance Indictors, or the measurements you’ll use to judge your return on investment (ROI) of your Facebook promotion. Some potential KPIs might be distribution:
- Distribution (total reach, spread of hashtags, page likes)
- Interaction (shares, comments, website referral traffic, blog comments, inbound links)
- Influence (share of voice, net promotors, brand evangelists, fan sentiment)
- Lead generation (email subscriptions, number of leads, cost per lead)
- Conversion (lead conversion rate, cost of sale, revenue per customer)
Conspicuously missing from this list? Facebook “Likes.” While seeing tons of “likes” may stroke your ego, they don’t have a strong value. Instead, focus on more impactful KPIs like leads generated, increased website traffic, email list subscribers, and sales conversions.
Step 2: Measure Your Efforts
One easy way to measure your Facebook promotion and get a clear picture of your ROI is by adding the Facebook Ad Conversion Pixel to your site. Use simple calculations to measure your KPIs. For example, image your KPI is number of new email subscribers, and you spent $6,000 in Facebook ads plus $500 on a prize. These efforts earned you 3,000 new email subscribers. Your cost per email, then, would be 3,000 (new email subscribers) divided by total cost of campaign ($6,500)- or, roughly 86 cents per subscriber.
Step 3: Maximize Your Return
This can be further broken down into a few smaller steps. First, pick your prize.Remember that the bigger the prize is, the more steps you can ask participants to follow; however, keep your prize relevant to your business to attract better participants and leads.
Second, keep your promotional post simple. Put the prize and its value in the title of your post, and explain how to enter using simple bullet points (you can link to a page on your website explaining the rules of the campaign). Choose your words carefully, and go for “softer” sell keywords rather than aggressively promotional words.
Third, use Facebook Connect for people entering your promotion. This way, you’ll get their email, name, age, city and the pages they like on Facebook- invaluable information for future marketing campaigns.
