Facebook is a complicated beast, especially when it comes to tangible ROI for healthcare marketing clients. Facebook itself has told marketing firms to “ abandon the industry's obsession with numbers of clicks and focus on more effective advertising techniques,” according to Reuters . Whether big brand marketing firms will heed Facebook advise or not is yet to be seen, however recent data from Nielsen is showing a shift in overall advertising funds.
While social media platforms such as Facebook , Twitter , Pinterest and Intstagram offer instant communication and interaction between brands and Fans, many big brands, especially in the healthcare industry, are finding it hard to place large budgets into this form of marketing.
- The new report by Nielson, taken from over 500 ‘digital media professionals – including brand marketers, media agencies and advertisers,’ shows that ‘three quarters of the companies surveyed were spending more for social media content, which could include paying bloggers to write posts about a product or using third-party technology to push videos on to the Web in home that they become viral.’
- Seventy percent of the advertisers surveyed said they dedicated up to 10 percent of their budget to paid social media advertising, while 13 percent dedicated more than 21 percent of their budget. Those numbers are expected to increase in 2013. – New York Times
- However, along with those numbers in the report also comes the fact that a third of ‘advertisers surveyed said they were unsure about the effectiveness of social media…and were unsure how to measure the return on their investment.
How Do You Measure The Effectiveness of Social Media?
There are quantifiable, simple ways to continue measuring social media effectiveness in terms of clicks and not simply building brand awareness.
• Website Click-Through – Yes, healthcare marketers still want to see those click-through numbers, and they will continue to measure success in that metric for many years to come no matter how much Facebook would like them to see otherwise. As your Fan engagement rises on Facebook , so too should your web traffic if you are directing them to that source.
Email Opt- – This is another simple, tangible metric that can be calculated by simply looking at the numbers. If you run a campaign on social media to push email opt-ins, has it worked? Do you know have more email addresses because of social media?
• Purchases and Services – Many campaigns can focus on promoting a specific product or service. In medical marketing, for example, that service might be flu shots as flu season comes into play. Did you medical offices see a rise in flu shots this year over last year? Was a Facebook campaign the only avenue you used to promote these services? If so, there is a tangible and direct relation for ROI.
These are just a few examples of quantifiable ways to measure the ROI of social media. Of course, there’s the ultimate objective of building awareness of your brand by creating and developing lasting relationships on these social networks. By creating brand advocates through social media, which admittedly is difficult to measure, you increase the possibility that your brand will succeed far into the future.
Summary:
Facebook is a complicated beast, especially when it comes to tangible ROI for healthcare marketing clients.
While social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Intstagram offer instant communication and interaction between brands and Fans, many big brands, especially in the healthcare industry, are finding it hard to place large budgets into this form of marketing.
There are quantifiable, simple ways to continue measuring social media effectiveness in terms of clicks and not simply building brand awareness.
As your Fan engagement rises on Facebook, so too should your web traffic if you are directing them to that source.
Do you know have more email addresses because of social media?
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