No patience for the ROI of Social Media discussion
In a blog post last week, Dell revealed that it has generated more than $2 million in revenue from @DellOutlet, one of its many Twitter sites. Late last year, there were some headlines about Dell crossing the $1 million mark via Twitter and it’s only gotten bigger since then.How did they do it? With a coupon code!
Wow, now that’s inventive. But this is not a dig at Dell it’s a dig at all of us marketers who say they don’t understand how to calculate an ROI from Social Media. My point is Dell isn’t using any secret sauce – its just plain old common sense. And at this point in social media or even in the development of the web - we have plenty of ways to track and measure lead generation coming from Social Media. So much so that I have lost all patience for this discussion.
In a blog post a few weeks ago called - Why is measuring Lead Gen in Social Media so hard? - I detailed a few ways that companies used to track lead generation such as: a unique 800 number in their white papers or a unique hotlink or email address embedded in their white papers. These would be only accessible via the various social media outposts they use to share their story like on RSS, syndicated Blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. Same goes for Video or Podcasts – have a strong call to action and send them to a unique URL. Don’t have a call to action try sharing it with a service like Bit.ly – a unique service that shortens your URL’s and then provides unique tracking of them.
If that’s not enough try flipping the equation around and using Google Analytics to find out how much traffic was driven to your website from services like Twitter, blogs you syndicate to etc ... If your tracking system isn’t robust enough to do that then remember back in the early days of Pay Per Click advertising when we used to create separate pages (I called them Ghost Pages) to track the traffic and conversions of each keyword. So for example if you had purchased a keyword such as: VoIP, I would set up a landing page on the website for that, a unique page for Google clicks, a unique page for Yahoo clicks and a unique page for AOL clicks (remember when we used to buy keywords there – sorry Tim Armstrong).
My point is back in the early days of the web marketers found ways to measure and track lead gen with a lot less sophisticated tools then we have now. True the number of channels have blossomed but that shouldn’t have changed our creativity when it comes to measuring the ROI of Social Media!
Labels: Lead Generation, social media
posted by Paul Dunay
6 Comments:
Thanks for the reality check.
One point though.
This Dell campaign is not "social" at all. It's traditional marketing on twitter with the "funnel" logic: 100K will read; 10K will check and 500 will buy. Very much like an emailing except that opt in in emailing makes the consumer more in charge of what he accepts or not.
There is nothing specific for me nor for my community in the message and no attempt to build trust, or establish a relation. Very little value in the message.
The paradigm of social media is usually the reverse: 100 will buy and they will be so delighted they will spread the word.
I personally would not retweet this tweet and if Dell would be using too many of those, I would report them as a spammer, like I do with emails.
Won't you ?
@ dominic - thanks so much for reaching out - you are absolutely right there is nothing social about their message - they are using a social channel to broadcast a message of a discount
same goes for the Asian BBQ truck which uses twitter to disclose where it will be that evening
I would argue that the Asian BBQ truck while doing the same as Dell is still communicating to a group of followers that rival a community
perhaps we are seeing some community building but of a one way nature using these tools
great comment
Hey Paul,
If you assume that an average Dell ticket is $750, that means only 2.6k units were sold. With a reported 200 Dell people Tweeting, that's only ~13 units each - and one might expect a good amount of cannibalization from a Dell-favorable audience. While it's nice to see a brand publicly talking about sales, I'm still wondering at what investment and margin? At what point would a senior exec seriously embrace twitter as a channel with a P&L target? My guess is that these sales are gravy and the best way to view these efforts are as customer support costs & benefits.
And, fwiw, like dominic I am one of those that would shift tweets with too many coupons into my spam list. I've already noticed more than a few brands who don't realize that Twitter is not simply an alternative to e-mail spam offers...
Hope you're happy with the new gig.
Edw.
Hey Ed - thanks for reaching out and commenting
I Love your thought about how to calculate the dollars per rep on twitter - overall I think it is safe to say 3 million for a company that size is a drop in the bucket - but hey you have to start somewhere right?
Also your theme of cannibalization is very interesting - I feel if they were just doing straight promotions on all Dell gear it would cannibalize their revenues but since it is close out material it is pure gravy
Yes - enjoying my new Avaya gig alot - its great to be in such an innovative communications firm in the middle of a communications revolution!
best
P
Dell could also pass out flyers in Times Square and kick off $3-mil in new sales. Why? Because they are Dell, and because they sell a great product. I don't think that mega corporations that already have enormous followings are the best examples for the effectiveness of social channels (b/c those companies would get those results regardless).
@ Travis - fair point
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