How to Calculate the ROI for Your Social Media Press Releases
A press release campaign can be an important and powerful component of your marketing strategy. Like any marketing tactic, it’s important to use analytics to evaluate and measure success. Let’s take a look how to assess the return on investment for your social media press releases.
1. Set Goals
The first step, and it’s an essential one, is to establish goals for your social media press release. What do you want to accomplish? This must be a goal that is quantifiable and measureable. It’s not enough to say, “I want to improve brand awareness.” Instead you’d create a goal that can be measured.
For example, “I want to increase traffic to my website by 10%.” Traffic is one measurement of brand awareness. It’s also important to connect your goals for your press release back to your business goals. They shouldn’t be arbitrary goals. They need to support your overarching goals. If your goal for your business and marketing is to increase sales by 10%, then your marketing and press release goals should support that sales goal.
2. Measure It
The next step, and again it’s an essential step, is to identify the tools you’re going to use to measure results. With press releases you have many tools to consider. You can use Google Analytics or another piece of analytics software to track visits and website activity. Social media sites also offer analytics tools you can use. Finally, your press release distribution service should offer information on shares, reprints and other measurable data.
3. Analyze the Data
Data without assessment is worthless. Schedule regular intervals to review the activity your press release generates. Identify where your traffic is coming from, learn what links motivate your social media audience to click, and pay attention to the releases that get the most shares, likes, and comments.
Finally, use the information that you gather through your analytics and systems to fine tune your press release marketing and social media marketing efforts. Tweak press releases to create more results and to reach your goals more quickly.
Create a connection between your social media press release and changes in your traffic, sales and website activity. This will be a manual activity where you’ll have to crunch the numbers. However with good systems in place and the right analytics, you’ll have everything you need to calculate the ROI for your social media press releases.
