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How to Calculate the
ROI of Social Publishing

© 2013 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary and Confidential 0713

How to Calculate the ROI of Social Publishing

Table of Contents
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Value Drivers for ROI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Building Brand Awareness and Growth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Doing the Numbers: Revenue from Brand Awareness and Growth

. . . . . . . . . . . .

7

Doing the Numbers: Savings from Brand Awareness and Growth . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Driving Behavior and Conversions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Doing the Numbers: Revenue from Driving Behavior and Conversions . . . . . . . . . 10
Deploying & Managing Social Presences at Scale. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Doing the Numbers: Savings From Deploying & Managing
Social Presences at Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
The JetBlue Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

© 2013 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Proprietary and Confidential http://www.salesforcemarketingcloud.com/

2


Introduction
Determining the return on investment of social media efforts has been
the holy grail of social media marketing since the medium’s inception.
Everyone wants the answers and information in terms of benefit to their
business.
Every vendor, platform and agency wants to tout the ability to decipher and improve on the return from
investing in social media, but many brands still struggle to find a way to measure the impact of social
media on their bottom line.
But it is possible to directly attribute revenue and cost savings back to social media campaigns, in
publishing, listening, and advertising. To do so, you’ll need to define the actions that are driving value
toward your business, the metrics that result from social media impact, and then tie those back to your
overall business. It requires some calculations and assumptions (or a good model, perhaps), but the
end result is a definitive dollar amount that can guide future iterations of social campaigns and help
streamline and optimize your overall marketing operations. Furthermore, measuring the value of your
investment will help you justify your actions and impact to your executive team and gain their support.
In this ebook, we focus on the ROI of social publishing, which includes:

• Social posts on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter
• Social presences on social networks and the open web at scale
• Using these posts and presences to drive conversions and consumer behavior
We look at the different ways to measure ROI for social publishing in terms of:

• How to tie it to business activities
• Which metrics best apply to measuring revenue growth
• Which metrics best apply to measuring cost savings
Throughout the ebook, we’ll provide examples to illustrate how you can measure the ROI of your social
publishing efforts using various scenarios. And at the end, we’ll show you how to add it all up to figure
out a final annual ROI calculation.
We’ve also got a great example from JetBlue, where we’ll show you how the company’s use of
Salesforce Buddy Media has led to real savings in the way they implement social campaigns.


3


Value Drivers for ROI
We’ve divided social publishing into three potential benefits: 1 building
brand awareness and growth, 2 driving behavior and conversions,
and 3 deploying and managing social presences at scale. We’ll talk
about each section in more detail, but here is a quick summary:
In the chart below, we look at: the value drivers that result from each of these three areas of benefit,
the social impact measures that result from social media activity, and the overall business metrics that
improve your team performance and save your company money.

1

3

Brand Awareness
and Growth

Value
Drivers

2
Drive Behavior and
Conversions

Deploy and Manage
Social Presences
at Scale

• Fan and follower growth • Conversion from social
• Earned Media from
Social Sharing

offers

• Social Application
Deployment

• Socially Influenced Sales • Social Reporting &
• Lead Generation

Analytics

• Revenue from Social
Sharing

Social
Impact
Measures

Business
Metrics

• Redemption rate of

social coupons/offers (+)

• % of inbound site traffic
from social sources (+)

• Redemption rate of

social coupons / offers
(+)

• % of inbound site traffic
from social sources (+)

• Reduced routine labor
costs (-)

• Reduced internal

expense for shared
creative & production
services (-)

• Decrease cost of

• Reduced routine labor

• Increased marketing

• Increased marketing

• Reduced internal

• Decreased cost of

customer acquisition (-)
productivity (+)

• Reduced Administrative
Overhead (-)

costs (-)

expense for shared
creative & production
services (-)

productivity (+)

customer acquisition (-)

• Increased profits (+)
• Reduced Administrative
Overhead (-)


4


1. Building Brand Awareness and Growth: Generating high value earned media and word-of1
mouth at scale through content publishing optimizing and social apps across social networks
and the open web. Building a network of brand advocates and decreased costs of customer
acquisition through building brand awareness. Increasing marketing productivity by expanding
brand reach.
Case Study: Read how Volvo tied its social audience with its non-social audience to educate
and interact with its buying demographic of both older and younger drivers.
2. Driving Behavior and Conversions: Using social apps to create social experiences that
2
influence desired behaviors while capturing leads or generating sales. Increasing referral traffic,
driving form completes, leads and other conversation types, or increasing online sales. Extending
experiences into partner networks to drive referral traffic and additional conversions.
Case Study: Learn how Cycle for Survival used social media to drive donation behavior for
cancer research.
3. Deploying and Managing Social Presences at Scale: Displaying unique content to
3
connections, fans and customers by language or country to maintain brand consistency across
global markets and affiliates. Repurposing effective content strategies and key learnings to drive
efficiency and performance, and decreasing costs of customer acquisition to increase marketing
productivity by focusing on productive campaign execution. Key reporting metrics that provide
data across social presences and campaigns despite language, location, and disparate teams.
Case Study: Learn how Recipe.com created and deployed socially enabled content within their
own website, increasing traffic to their website without having to recreate major elements of the
site.


5


Building Brand Awareness and Growth

Volvo uses social publishing to drive brand awareness of its cars, appealing to both young and old drivers.

To increase brand awareness and growth,
consider social activities such as:

Detailed Metrics *

+49%
+47%

• Optimizing publishing strategies to

maximize engagement across multiple
social networks

• Placing social apps across leading

social networks, mobile experiences,
and the open web

Uplift in Engagement Per Post

+0.05%

• Using social applications to create
customizable and flexible social
presences

Increase in Number of Social Posts

$50
+0.9%
+0.05%
$0.14**

Social Assist Rate
Average value per sale from a social
source
Social Shares Per Impression
Conversions Per Share
Average CPM on Facebook

**Not currently included in example that follows


6


Doing the Numbers: Revenue from Brand Awareness
and Growth
BestTech, a regional competitor to Best Buy, currently has 100,000
Facebook fans and 20,000 followers on Twitter. They currently publish an
average of 1,005 Facebook posts and 5,850 Tweets per quarter.
BestTech’s Facebook and Twitter Engagement Rate is 0.21%
(likes+comments+shares/impressions) and 0.01% (replies+retweets/
impressions), respectively. As a result, the company sees 847,975
Facebook engagements and 61,351 Twitter engagements per year.
With a social assist average rate of 0.05% per engagement at $50 per
online sale, BestTech currently estimates sales attributable to engagement
valued at $22,733.

Note: BestTech is a fictional
company created for the
purposes of illustrating this
point.

Since implementing Salesforce Buddy Media, BestTech has been able to increase their total number of
outbound posts per quarter by 49% with post scheduling and team collaborating. Furthermore, their
Facebook and Twitter engagement has increased by 46.5% to 0.31% and 0.02%, respectively. As a
result, they now see 1,851,002 Facebook engagements and 133,920 Twitter engagements per year.
With an average of 0.05% conversions per engagement at $50 per online sale, BestTech has seen an
aggregate annual increase of sales attributable to social media of $26,890, or $49,623 per year.


7


Doing the Numbers: Savings from Brand Awareness
and Growth
BestTech currently has annual web traffic of 10,000,000 visits and annual
revenue of $30,000,000. Since implementing Salesforce Buddy Media,
BestTech has increased the sharing of content from its website to social
sources.
The 10,000,000 visitors to BestTech’s website annually are now seeing
an average of four sharable assets per impression on a web page, which
totals 40,000,000 sharable assets viewed by web visitors.
With an average of 0.9% shares per impression, BestTech is seeing a net
of 360,000 shares per year.

purposes of illustrating this
point.

Additionally, BestTech is also seeing a 23% uplift in clickbacks per share, resulting in an increase of
82,800 new site visits from these shares.
If BestTech were to pay per click for these new visits through paid banner ads, these ads would cost,
on average, $0.50 per click. As a result, BestTech is saving $41,400 per year through using
Salesforce Buddy Media that it would otherwise be spending on banner or SEM ads to generate
equivalent web traffic.


8


Driving Behavior and Conversions

Cycle for Survival created social presences that influenced consumer behavior with the goal of increasing
awareness and donations to the organization’s cause, defeating rare cancers.

To drive behavior and conversions, try these social activities:

• Use social apps to create social

experiences that influence attitudes
and behaviors on Facebook, YouTube
and the open web.

Detailed Metrics *

+27%

Redemption Rate Uplift from Social
Coupons and Offers

+15%

Conversion Rate Uplift from
Additional Social CTAs

+20%

Increase in Average Order Value

+18%

Increase in online leads from content
marketing (whitepapers, webinars,
etc…)

+15%

Conversion Rate Uplift from
Additional Social CTAs

+20%

Increase in Average Lead Value

• Extend social experiences onto

websites through partnerships to
drive referral traffic and additional
conversions

• Add social sharing buttons to your

website to make content or products
sharable across multiple social
networks, such as Facebook, Twitter,
Pinterest, Google+, and LinkedIn


9


Doing the Numbers: Revenue from Driving Behavior
and Conversions
BestTech currently has annual web traffic of 10,000,000 visits and annual
revenue of $30,000,000. Of those visits, 200,000 (2%) can be directly
attributed to current social media initiatives.
Of those visits, 2,000 convert for an average order size of $50. The
cumulative order value of those visits is $100,000, which is the current net
annual impact on sales from social media.

Since implementing Salesforce Buddy Media, BestTech has seen a 27%
increase in visits from social media this year, resulting in 54,000 more total purposes of illustrating this
point.
visits. Furthermore, the conversion rate of web visitors has improved 15%,
resulting in a great number of purchases by the 254,000 customers now visiting BestTech’s website
from social media.

Additionally, the average order value of each visit has increased by 20%, to $60 per order.
This results in a total increase in sales from social media sources of $62,000.


10


Deploying & Managing Social Presences at Scale
To deploy and manage social presences at scale,
take a look at these social activities:

• Total flexibility for Page management

strategy based on organization structure

• Publish standardized content to local

markets, franchisees, local affiliates, or
retail locations

• Standardize and templatize everything to

limit the amount of repeat work everyone is
doing

Detailed Metrics *

+50%

Reduction in project expense
creating and managing social
media presences

+56%

Reduction in internal marketing
employee time spent reporting
on campaign activity and
results

$200

Cost per hour for creative
service time

$60

Cost per hour for internal
employee time

• Create an asset library to share content

Recipe.com places socially-enabled content, in the form of a voting sweepstakes, on its website, which drove
traffic, created viral content and allowed for easy content management.


11


Doing the Numbers: Savings From Deploying &
Managing Social Presences at Scale
BestTech is currently creating and launching 25 campaigns that require 15
unique landing pages per campaign each year. This results in an average
annual production of 375 presences. Due to this large volume, BestTech
has been relying heavily on creative and production services and analytics
reporting support.

Note: In this example, we
show how our fictional
company, BestTech, saves
money from deploying and
managing social presences
at scale.

By using Salesforce Buddy Media, BestTech was able to optimize a set
of social applications that eliminated the need to create 15 unique landing
pages by allowing the BestTech production team to re-use templates that
they created with social applications.

Now with the help of Salesforce Buddy Media, BestTech reduced
production to the equivalent of 25 unique social presences. Prior to using
Buddy Media, creative services, production and reporting costs were $200 per hour. Since it took four
hours for each of the 375 social presences created, the total cost was $300,000 per year.
BestTech has been able to increase development productivity since implementing Buddy Media
resulting in a reduction of creative services costs to $60 per hour and decreased customization time by
50%. Furthermore, the time to create each presence was reduced by 10%, so creative costs are only
$40,500 per year. The annual cost reduction: $259,500.


12


Adding It All Up
Our fictional tech retailer, BestTech, grew revenue
and saved a bunch of money using social media
and optimizing its marketing technologies to
increase ROI from social publishing. But many
companies often want one lump number, both in
terms of dollars, cost-benefit ratio, and a payback
period, to take to their executive team to justify
their social media spend.

Annual Benefit in Thousands

$0

$100

$200

Annual Benefit in Thousands

$300

$400

$500

Revenue Increase

In the chart below, we give an example of how BestTech can add up all of the revenue and cost-saving
numbers from the above examples to churn out summary metrics for social publishing ROI.
As indicated in the charts above, BestTech saw a ROI (from implementing Salesforce Buddy Media) of
134%, which equates to a cost-benefit ratio of 1:1.3. It would take nine months for BestTech to make
back the money spent on Salesforce Buddy Media through increased revenue and cost reduction from
social media activities.


13


The JetBlue Story
The examples of BestTech, a competitor of Best Buy, are obviously fabricated. Salesforce Marketing
Cloud regularly works with clients to determine a strategy for understanding and measuring social
media marketing ROI. To show you how an external firm would do this on your behalf, we partnered
with Nucleus Research to calculate the net benefits of Salesforce Buddy Media and JetBlue.
The results of the study, which you can view in full
Types of Benefits
here, are similar to those in the example analysis
with BestTech above. The primary ROI in the case
of JetBlue comes from cost reduction of creative
Direct 92%
Indirect 8%
services and production costs. In the graphics
below, you’ll see some of the key results from the
Nucleus Research report, providing a real-world example of the stories we presented through BestTech.


14


Conclusion
Calculating the ROI of social media efforts is no easy task; yet, brands
are becoming smarter in setting measurable social media objectives.
As technology is refined to better provide insights into conversions and
overall revenue and cost-saving from campaigns, calculating ROI will
only grow easier.
This ebook helps point you in the direction on the metrics to look at and the calculations to make
concerning social publishing ROI.
Every business is different; thus, the ways in which brands choose to calculate ROI can vary. But this
report should give you a good baseline for understanding how to measure the ROI of social marketing
technology, and can be used in part or in whole to help guide your own calculations.

Get Started
* All the metrics used to calculate business value in this study are based on Salesforce CSAT data, publicly available data sources, metadata from
marketing cloud products, and rules of thumb we have received through conversations with our customers. If you have any questions about these
datapoint please contact Andrew Gothelf at agothelf@salesforce.com.

Have questions? Contact us:
W

www.salesforcemarketingcloud.com
@marketingcloud

T

E

marketingcloud@salesforce.com

1-888-672-3426


15

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