Social Media ROI Misconceptions mHealth Companies Need To Know

I find myself talking with mHealth clients about their social media “return on investment” (ROI) almost every day. It’s a hot-button topic among marketers and businesses alike.

The problem is that ROI means different things to different people, but I like what Jesse Stanchak had to say about it in his recent blog.  It’s got to be built in to your social media strategy from day one or the data will be meaningless, or worse … you won’t know what to do with the data and it gets buried in a report somewhere that no one sees.

These top 5 social media ROI misconceptions are taken from Jesse’s article on smartbrief.com:

mHealth Marketing Social Media ROI Myths

1. ROI doesn’t matter.
Some people will argue that because we don’t know what the exact ROI of a phone book ad is, that lets social media marketers off the hook. The problem with that reasoning is that once you decide ROI doesn’t matter, it opens the door to all kinds of magical thinking.

That doesn’t mean you should ignore social media if you can’t generate ROI immediately. Even if you’re never able to establish a hard ROI ratio, the very act of pursuing ROI brings rigor to your marketing as you continually test, refine and retest your efforts based on solid benchmarks and clearly defined business goals.

2. Social media is free.
Social media is time intensive, and your time is valuable.  As your presence grows you may need to pay for tools or additional staff, but at minimum you need to account for the value of the time you commit.

3. ROI is all about sales.
If you want to understand the full benefit of your social media efforts, you need to look at cost savings throughout the organization. If you lower your cost per lead, improve the efficiency of your customer service or attract qualified new hires using social tools, you’re generating ROI.

4. ROI can be measured in something other than money.
Fans aren’t ROI. Neither are retweets or blog comments or any form of social sharing or participation – if only for the simple reason that not all comments are equal. A single social media interaction with a client might create a sale or save you money – but many more will not. So it doesn’t make sense to measure all such interactions as equal indicators of success. ROI can only be measured in currency earned.

5. Finding ROI just requires a little back-of the envelope math.
You can’t just assign a dollar value to each fan and then add them all together. The process of calculating the costs and benefits of social media vary depending on your tactics and goals.

I’m sure not everyone will agree on what ROI means, but I think we can all agree that ROI is important and as your business delves further and further into the social culture … you’ll want more of it.

What questions do you have about social media ROI for your mHealth firm?

photo credit: Dean Meyers via photopin cc

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