Читать книгу Social Media Marketing All-in-One For Dummies - Michelle Krasniak - Страница 36

If you track ROI, at some point you must track revenue and profits as business metrics. Otherwise, there’s no ROI to compute. Unlike the previous emphasis on social media for customer engagement, recent statistics show a rapid increase in social commerce (direct sales from social media), as shown in Figure 2-2. According to data from Statista, social commerce sales in the United States is expected to quadruple in the next five years, from $22 billion in 2019 to $84 billion in 2024.

If you sell online, your storefront should provide ways for you to slice and dice sales to obtain crucial data. However, if your sales come from services, from a brick-and-mortar store, or from large contractual purchases, you probably need to obtain revenue statistics from financial or other external records to plug into your ROI calculation.

If you manage a bricks-and-clicks operation, you may want to integrate your online and offline operations by selecting e-commerce software from the vendor who provides the point-of-sales (POS) package for your cash registers. That software may already be integrated with your inventory control and accounting packages.

Source: www.statista.com/statistics/277045/us-social-commerce-revenue-forecast/#:~:text=In%202019%2C%20social%20commerce%20sales,U.S.%20retail%20e%2Dcommerce%20sales.

FIGURE 2-2: Social commerce revenues will grow rapidly over the next five years (in billions).

Just as with performance metrics, you should be able to acquire certain key performance indicators (KPI) for sales by using storefront statistics. Confirm that you can access this data before purchasing your e-commerce package:

 You should be able to determine how often customers buy (number of transactions per month), how many new customers you acquire (reach), and how much they spend per transaction (yield).

 Look for sales reports by average dollar amount as well as by number of sales. Plugging average numbers into an ROI calculation is easier, and the results are close enough as long as the inputs are consistent.

 You should be able to find order totals for any specified timeframe so that you can track sales tied to promotions, marketing activities, and sale announcements.

 Look for the capability to sort sales by new and repeat customers; to allow for future, personalized offers; and to distinguish numbers for CAC.

 Your sales statistics should include a conversion funnel (as described in Chapter 1 of this minibook). Try to trace the path upstream so that you can identify sales initiated from social media.

 Check that data can be exported to a spreadsheet.

 Make sure that you can collect statistics on the use of promotion codes by number and dollar value so that you can decide which promotions are the most successful.

 Having store reports that break down sales by product is helpful. Sometimes called a product tree, this report shows which products are selling by SKU (stock keeping unit) and category.

Table 2-2 lists some storefront options that integrate with social media and offer sales analytics. Unfortunately, not all third-party storefront solutions offer ideal tracking. Many storefront solutions use Google Analytics, shown in Figure 2-3, to track transactions.

TABLE 2-2 Social Media Store Solutions Offering Sales Statistics

Name	URL	Type of Sales Stats Available
Google Analytics ECommerce Tracking	https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs	Google Analytics for e-commerce.
Ecwid	www.ecwid.com/payvment	Integrated storefront that works on social media, mobile, and blog sites.
ProductCart	www.productcart.com	Google Analytics integration at the product level.
Shopify	www.shopify.com	Offers its own reports as well as integration with Google Analytics, Facebook pixel, and Pinterest tag.
BigCommerce	www.bigcommerce.com	Social commerce platform that works with Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, as well as eBay, Amazon, and Google Shopping.
3dcart	www.3dcart.com	E-commerce platform that is a one-stop shop for creating an online store. It connects with Facebook, eBay, Amazon, and other channels.

As the value of social media for generating sales has grown, many social media channels have improved their tracking options for sales completed on a website. In addition to Facebook’s long-offered conversion pixel, Pinterest now has a tag code tool and Twitter generates conversion code for placement on a “thank-you” page at the conclusion of a purchase.

If you created alternative SKUs for products sold by way of social media for tracking, be sure to merge them into the same category of your product tree. Using multiple SKUs isn’t recommended if your storefront solution includes inventory control.

You can input the numbers from your social media sales metrics into a sales calculator to forecast unit sales needed to meet your goals. Figure 2-4 shows a calculator from AccountingforManagement.org at www.accountingformanagement.org/target-profit-sales-calculator. Users enter values for the variables in the fields at the top of the image and click Calculate; different forecasts appear below the fields.

Courtesy of SEOReseller.com

FIGURE 2-3: Typical e-commerce statistics available on Google Analytics.

Courtesy of AccountingforManagement.org

FIGURE 2-4: Target Profit Sales calculator from AccountingforManagement.org.