Social Media Patience

By: Joseph Kiefer, ASM

The benefits of social media have been expounded upon by the media so many times that I will not even bother going through them. Rather, I will assume that we are all in agreeance that there are inherent benefits to be found through the social media channel. Now, what you perceive those benefits to be and how to best use those to the benefit of your organization is a completely different story.

As a BtoB direct marketer I am instinctively looking for the ROI in any marekting campaign. Going into social media testing was no different, outside of the fact that the timelines were stretched out a bit compared to most direct marketing tests. I am instinctively impatient when it comes to ROI so social media pushed my boundaries for acceptable return on investment. It was definitely a leap of faith in regards to thinking that much further down the road we will reap the rewards of the current social media efforts.

We did our homework on social media prior to testing and much of the benefit was coming from the communication channels it was providing, but not necessarily sales channels. Many of the social media sites make it much easier to reach out to customers quickly and effectively. It was hard to find much in the way of successful ROI driven case studies in the BtoB environment. This was part of the reason for the stretched timelines. I didn't want to give up too early before taking the time to test, measure, tweak... rinse and repeat.

Even with our stretched timelines the social media testing has gone beyond the budget on timing, but we have seen just enough in the lines of traffic and sales to keep us interested and pushing forward. I have recently read that other BtoB firms are starting to see some similar results as well.

I don't think any of the social media sites will be calling me to use us as a case study anytime soon. That being said, I am becoming more confident each day that the time and effort we have put in will pay off with a long term ROI. Stay patient and diligent with your social media efforts and I am confident you will come to the same conclusion.