Many business owners can be disappointed after a while due to the initial unrealistic expectations of their social media marketing efforts.

However, we should not blame social media for it, but rather, create a better marketing plan that accounts for the customized goals for your business.

Every business owner has different goals and expectations from social media marketing, but here’s a general idea of the actual ROI that social media may bring.

Brand awareness

Social media can be very useful, especially when you are trying to spread the word about your business. Whether it’s a local increase of awareness or a boost of your national reputation, social media marketing may offer you the right platforms and tools to achieve so.

Although brand awareness is sometimes disregarded as an actual ROI, you cannot ignore it, as it’s the beginning of further engagement and interest towards your business.

For example, a lawyer joins social media to build the reputation of his/her business and the first step is to increase the awareness of their work in order to ensure that you can gain new clients afterward.

As customers become more cautious nowadays, social media marketing may help any business establish its presence in the demanding digital world through the right amount of content and information that would help people build trust and eventually pick your business over others.

Community engagement

Once you start increasing brand awareness with social media marketing, it’s time to start focusing on the engagement of the community, and this is a very crucial step if you want to convert the visitor into a loyal customer.

Social media marketing is not just about the constant promotion of your company, it’s also about creating a connection with your audience, learning more about their interests and their needs, and creating and delivering content that they find useful and interesting.

Thus, community engagement is very important, since it will make you stand out from the competition. After all, social media is all about being social and the best way to achieve it is to be genuine and take care of your audience.

Measuring performance

No matter what goals you set from your social media marketing efforts, it is vital that you measure their performance in order to examine what works and what can be omitted from your future marketing activities.

Social media measurement can become complex, but this doesn’t mean that you should ignore it, even at its simplest form.

How can you tell whether your content is successful? How do you measure the increase of your audience? Can you tell whether the engagement is enough for your efforts?

It’s not just about the number of followers or the likes, it’s about understanding the insights of each platform that will help you produce better content, while learning more about your audience.

Even if you hand your social media marketing to an expert, you can still keep an eye on the basic metrics that indicate the online performance of your business, as this will give you a better understanding of the ROI that social media may bring.

Aim high, but be realistic

Social media may lead to false expectations of instant success, but as you can see, the real ROI can be way more useful than a sudden increase in likes, especially when they are not converting afterward.

Don’t be afraid to invest in social media marketing services, but set realistic expectations at first for your ROI. You can aim higher over time, after you’ve measured your initial performance. Keep your goals and your efforts consistent so you can build a successful online presence for your business.

Do you want to learn more about social media marketing and it’s true ROI? Feel free to contact us, we’d be happy to find the right package that will benefit your business, as well as help you create a customized social media marketing strategy to take your business to the next level!