Once upon a time, digital marketing was still a fledgling field – and many were sceptical of the effects it can have and the leads it can produce. Today, however, that has changed – and the majority of modern businesses accept the benefits that a fully inbound approach to marketing, including social selling, can provide. In short – most businesses know that social media marketing works.
Despite this, however, the details of exactly how it works remain unclear to many businesses. Companies struggle to predict the size of leads and the return on investment that a social campaign will generate.
- How much ROI can a social campaign be expected to produce?
- What types of social media are most effective?
- Which platforms provide the highest ROI.
In our latest Insights report, ‘Social Selling and Return on Investment’, we researched and quantified these precise links, using research from the social strategies of over 90 Microsoft Partner Companies. In fact, this research is the first of its kind to measure social selling outcomes specifically within B2B Microsoft Partner Businesses.
What did we measure – and how?
The main objective of our study was to discover the financial link between social selling and ROI. The report conclusively and definitively found that this correlation exists. But as well as this, we looked into a range of other relationships and correlations that allowed us to uncover unprecedented insights into the effect of contemporary social selling strategies.
Using data from over 90 Microsoft Partner Companies, we compared metrics on:
- Frequency of social posts
- The platform they were posted on
- The success of different content types
- Financial investment in social selling
To unlock our exclusive insights, each of these variables were compared against the average number of leads that Partner businesses achieved.
Our investigation determines the proportion of marketing and social budgets that partners spent in order to achieve a specific quantity of monthly leads. With this information, contemporary digital marketing departments are armed with an exclusive range of insights that will allow them to plan and execute an effective digital marketing campaign.
What we discovered
The main objective of our research was to find a correlation between the amount of money that companies invested into their social campaigns, and the subsequent leads they generated. Without giving away the full findings, here’s a brief look at some of what we discovered.
- Companies that used social media more frequently achieved the largest size of deals
- Videos and animations were most often posted by companies with the highest quantity of leads.
- There was little to no difference in size and amount of leads generated between companies with minimal social presence and those with none whatsoever.
As well as these statistics, the report also features more detailed, quantified insights into the following questions
- The precise dollar value that high social scorers achieve on average
- The average number and size of leads generated by companies who posted weekly, monthly, and less than monthly
- Which types of social content are most effective
- Which platforms generated most leads
- The correlation between social selling budget and quantity of leads generated
Armed with this information, marketers have a wealth of valuable information that will allow them to identify every element of an effective social selling campaign.
Insights from the experts
As well as these exclusive insights, the report also features exclusive insights from expert Microsoft Partner marketers right across the ecosystem. In one of these examples, David Lavenda from harmon.ie perfectly encapsulates the gap in research that this report fills:
There’s a gap between the buying and selling cycle. So, while most companies use social media, not everybody sees it as a direct sales tool of its own merit.
-David Lavenda
harmon.ie
As well as this, we discuss a range of independent insights into the types of marketing strategies that work for individual businesses – and how they’ve found success.
For us, it’s about visibility. It’s not necessarily about direct sales, but rather that social selling acts as an influencer.
-Matthias Seidel
Rencore
These practical insights and opinions provide real-world proof to the research, correlations, and statistics that this report uncovers.
Get the report
With ‘Social Selling and Return on Investment’, Microsoft Partner marketers will have access to the most specific and exclusive range of insights into the success of their marketing strategies available.
If you want to find out more, or buy a copy of the report for yourself today, head on over to the Insights Website today. Alternatively, get in touch with the Insights team today to find out more.