Malfair Marketing - Hotel Marketing Services

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🚀Beyond Money: How to Make Bank on Social Media

Christine Malfair, Malfair Marketing

​It's every marketer's or social media manager’s nightmare.
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Being pulled into a meeting with executives and asked,
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“What’s the ROI on social media?”
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In other words, Is the social media strategy generating or losing money?
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It can be a bit of a nightmare because it's tricky and difficult to measure by one goal—financial.
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A positive return (ROI) implies that revenue generated from a social media channel exceeds the cost.
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But in many cases, financial ROI in social media looks like this.
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$7,000 booked from Facebook - $50K in social media costs / $40K in costs = - 82.5% ROI ​
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Yes, negative 82.5%. Yikes.

It's a fair question, but it's not the right one.
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To truly understand the "return" on your marketing efforts, you must define what "return" means for each channel.
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When I evaluate marketing channels, I run them through my signature IDEAL buyer's journey.
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It divides the buyer's journey into phases, allowing you to focus on what’s happening at each stage.
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IDEAL is an acronym for: Introduction, Discovery, Evaluation, Action, and Loyalty.
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It looks like this.

The graphic shows that social media influences each stage of a guest's journey with you.
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Since there are so many points in their journey with you, attribution (the revenue source) is difficult to measure.
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Here's how it works.

Introduction: making your first impression

  • they see you on a friend's social account (or influencer)

  • contests or giveaways

  • brand awareness ad campaigns

Discovery: gathering more information

  • they go deeper, exploring several pieces of content

  • they watch your YouTube videos

  • read through your FAQ posts

Evaluation: seeking social proof

  • check out your reviews and testimonials

  • how you differ from the competition

  • what other guests have posted about, what's post-worthy

Action: engaging with you

  • engagement - they comment, share, like, save

  • messaging app communication

  • strong CTA (call to action) for a limited-time offer

  • social retargeting ads

Loyalty: keep coming back

  • you engage with them - comments, follows, tagging

  • they are interested in new content

  • community perks, insiders club for events, deals, etc

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Did you notice there wasn't anything about a purchase? 😯
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Looking at the whole picture, it becomes clear how social media helps move customers along their journey to purchase at various stages.
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What also is clear is that social media leads your guests to various places online. Those other online platforms like TripAdvisor or your website get attribution, meaning they get marked down as the revenue source.
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See how measuring ROI can be tricky for social?

When you look at each stage separately, you can focus on leveraging your content to align with each stage.
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