How To Crush Your Competition and Focus On ROE

Warren Knight — February 11, 2017 Follow @warrenknight

80% OF MARKETERS HAVE SAID THAT THEIR SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING HAS INCREASED TRAFFIC TO THEIR WEBSITE. DO YOU THINK THIS IS BECAUSE OF THEIR INVESTMENT MADE, OR BECAUSE OF THE ENGAGEMENT THEY HAVE BUILT? IT’S THE LATTER.

I know that ROE (return on engagement) has been floating around the internet world for a few years, but it wasn’t until recently where I really thought about the importance of engagement over investment, and why this was more significant to my target market than ever before.

At the beginning of February, I launched (for the first time) a 28 Day Social Media Challenge, of which I had over 550 people sign up to. This challenge runs for 28 days, and gives those who have signed up an action to take a day, which is shared across their social networks (you can follow this through the hashtag #DigitalChallenge).

By the end of day 2, brand were actually getting sales. This wasn’t because they had spent money on advertising, or because they had spent hours fishing out their audience and hard-selling; it was because of engagement.

In just 2 days, businesses were increasing sales BECAUSE of the engagement they had encouraged, and participated in. The goal of the challenge was never to get sales, but when you focus on adding value and humanising technology, sales will happen naturally.

We are now in day 10, and the sales for the brands are increasing and this is purely because of engagement. The importance of ROE is much clearer to me now and because of this, I am going to share with you how YOU can crush your competition, and focus on ROE.

HOW MUCH “TIME” ARE YOUR AUDIENCE SPENDING ON YOUR WEBSITE?

The longer a potential customer spends interacting with you on your website, the more they will get to know YOU as a brand, the most trust they will have with you. Having a good website that offers a great user-experience in the form of navigation, page loading time, content and visuals will mean that your audience spends more time on your website.

Measuring this is key because more time spent on your website = a higher engagement across all of your social platforms. You can use Google Analytics to measure the time a potential customer spends on your website.

BUILDING CUSTOMER LOYALTY

What are you doing that gives your already existing customers a chance to become a brand advocate of yours? For example, I recently ran a Digital Marketing Workshop. This was in collaboration with another brand but because I knew my audience would be interested, I reached out to them and offered them a discount on the ticket price. This was my way of saying “thank you” for engaging with me, and in turn they get to spend the day with me at a discounted price, and this built customer loyalty and made my customers brand advocates.

SIDE PRODUCT MARKETING

I have spoken about side product marketing in an article last year, and this is something that brings me so much engagement online. The 28 Day Social Media Challenge was a great side-product of mine, but this only runs for 28 days. Think about more long-term. I have 16 FREE downloads available on my website, all of which require a name and email address to access. This is so that I can create further engagement with them through an automated email marketing series. The more times your brand can “touch” your customer online whether this be through Social Media, email marketing, or paid advertisements the better.

HOW MANY SOCIAL MEDIA SHARES ARE YOU GETTING?

A Social Media share is one of the most important indicators around having successful engagement. If someone is retweeting a tweet, or sharing your content in Facebook this is a great start to building that person as a brand advocate. If it is always in your mind that getting a share on Social Media is important, it will help you to create content that is unique, relevant and most importantly; shareable.

OFFER GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE

How many big brands have you seen replying to their customers as a response to a query? You will see the likes of ASOS and other retailers offering customer service. Actively showing that you are there to answer questions is a great way to encourage further engagement, as long as your customers are satisfied with your support.

It isn’t just about replying to the great feedback you get; you also must respond to the negative feedback you receive. Negative feedback going unanswered is one of the quickest ways you can lose trust as a brand online and this in turn, will decrease your online engagement.

Now that you have some inspiration around giving your audience the platform to engage with you, here is a very simple formula to actually measuring your ROE success.

MEASURING YOUR ROE SUCCESS

When it comes to measuring your ROE success, there is a very simple way you can do this, which I have shared with you below.

STEP 1: CHOOSE A GOAL

What do you want to achieve in the form of engagement? Here are a few “metrics” that I would chose as a goal.

• New followers
  
• Shares
  
• Website hits
  
• My side-products – how many sign ups have we had?
  
• Webinar signups

STEP 2: TRACKING YOUR GOAL

I briefly mentioned this above, but tracking your goal is the only way you know whether it has been a success or not. You can use Google Analytics to measure your website goals, and the likes of Hootsuite to measure shares, retweets and clicks on a link.

STEP 3: COLLECT YOUR DATA

You must be able to organise all of your customer interaction data, to be able to measure engagement. This will include looking at behaviors, demographics, favourite products and their network of preference, and the most important “touch point”.

You should also be collecting data through customer feedback and survey forms. At the end of one of my online courses, I always send a customer feedback form so that I can analyse this data.

STEP 4: CALCULATE YOUR CUSTOMER LIFETIME VALUE

How much is it costing you to generate a new customer? One of the most important calculations you will do for your business, is working out your customer’s lifetime value. This is the value a customer will contribute to your business over the entire lifetime of your company. This calculation is usually done on a per customer basis, but is determined for the average customer in your target market. If you have more than one target market, you may find that there is a different in customer lifetime worth.

If you are unsure of how to calculate this, I have a customer lifetime value calculator which you can access here completely free of charge.

STEP 5: REAL-TIME ANALYTICS

Understanding and analysing real-time data is key to generating a ROE because every customer is different, and their value and engagement is different. Take all of your customer data captured online, and analyse that in real-time to give you a breakdown of how you can improve the way you market online tomorrow.

Customers want to be treated differently, and understanding this will give you a better insight into data that relates to behavior. This isn’t about achieve perfection as a business, it’s about know what works for your audience, and what doesn’t. I know that the 28 Day Social Media Challenge is what’s working for my audience. I can measure this based on the engagement I receive on a daily basis, and how much the hashtag #DigitalChallenge has been utilised on Social Media.

I would love to hear how you measure Return on Engagement, and whether data you collect gives you an indication on the next step you should take as a business marketing online.

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