Does Real Social Media ROI Exist?

First . . . Goals

Before even starting to think about ROI, we need to consider what our goals are for each social media channel. Customer acquisition, clicks, offers, competitions, etc. Clearly knowing what you expect from each channel - and knowing what success looks like is our first step. In the case of venues, theatres and festivals those goals might be to increase customer service, boost ticket sales, see a rise in offers or discount use, online contest signup, membership signups, video views or something else. Not everything need be a sales goal, but all your content needs to be ultimately driving to a sale. And remember that some channels are good at driving sales, while other channels might be better for customer service. For example, Twitter is a great channel for running contests, offers and managing some aspects of customer service.

Which Platform?

Well, that depends. Where is your audience? Who is your audience? When are they on social media? They might be spread out or they might all really live in one place. Using some analytics, get into your data and find out where your audience and fans are - that is where you need to be as well. That said, some channels are definitely better than others depending on your goals. So for example, Facebook is ubiquitous - this is one channel you have to be on. Pintrest? If your audience is mostly women and you are focused mainly on lifestyle or products - then it is definitely for you. For most Ticketsolve customers, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram work best. But again - take a look at your audience personas - where ever they are is where you need to be. We can email you Ticketsolve’s Creating The Perfect Campaign Playbook which can really help you devise the best strategy.

Get Tracking

For years, we’ve attended the AMA conferences and Theatre Forum conferences, where the virtues of social media have been - very rightly - touted. But measuring the success of these campaigns has been notoriously difficult. But with the right tools, you can start to visualise how successful your campaigns are. Our next step is to start building a picture of ROI for your campaigns. In order to do that you need some tools. Ticketsolve's Facebook and Google Analytics integrations mean you are already on your way to getting rich social media data. There are a ton of tools for tracking and measuring your data - some free, others not. Our suggestion is to start with the basics and build up from there as you gain understanding and determine exactly what your arts venue needs.

How Ticketsolve Can Help You Determine ROI

So now let’s take a look at how to determine ROI from your social media campaigns, using a real Ticketsolve customer as an example. Using Ticketsolve’s integration with Facebook, our example 300+ seat theatre is able to take a deeper view into their ROI to understand which campaigns are working and which ones are not. This focus on ROI means that the theatre can adjust their social media activities quickly. Utilising Facebook so efficiently means they save time and money, and get much better reach. For example, in the last year the theatre ran 719 campaigns on Facebook with a reach of almost 400,000 people. The ROI from these campaigns? From the 719 campaigns they saw an ROI of 338%. One campaign saw an astounding ROI of almost 3900%. This ROI translates into Facebook campaigns generating real revenue of almost 10% of their online sales in 2017. In addition, the theatre uses Ticketsolve’s Facebook Pixel integration. This allows them to monitor their data even more closely, and make adjustments to campaigns to improve ROI. Ticketsolve’s Facebook Pixel integration data, also gives the theatre an accurate representation of their audience’s behaviour, helping to close the loop on the customer journey and experience online.Finally, using Ticketsolve’s Google Analytics integration, the theatre tracks and reports website traffic, and can begin to make direct correlations to social media links and purchases. Coupled with Google Adwords, they can review online marketing campaigns and review landing page quality and online conversions, across desktop and mobile. The ability to really dive deep into their data, and tweak their campaigns has allowed the theatre to see a sizeable lift in their ROI on social media and Google Adwords in the last 12 months.

Closing the Loop: Remarketing

One the key benefits of tracking and measuring your data so finely is the ability to remarket to your customers. In order to remarket, you need to be able to understand where customers are falling off the purchase process. Ticketsolve is fully integrated with Google Analytics, and Facebook Ads giving you full visibility of your customers’ journey. This high level of clarity allows you to adjust marketing campaigns and events to improve your ROI. With this data, you can then re-engage customers with Google Remarketing Ads, even within MailChimp, to draw them back in. Remarketing really boosts your ROI - maximising every pound or euro you spend on social media and beyond! Why not try measuring ROI, and remarketing now? Try these tips from Mailchimp on making the most of social ads during the holidays.