How should companies measure their social media marketing success?

There is no way or method to do calculate the success rate of it. Mostly what I have seen that people promoting products in Social Media Channels get a 3-5% conversions out of their Social Media traffic but if only the campaign is executed tremendously well.

Well it depends completely on your goal.
Is your campaign for awareness, reach, conversions, customer service/satisfaction --? Everything starts from there.

Hi kennelsnout,

One of the best definitions of success that I have ever heard is that "success is the progressive realization of a worthwhile goal".

It all starts with a goal.

Success can only be determined when compared to a specific measurable goal.

Without a specific goal it is just aimless motion.

To use an analogy, think of your marketing as a sea voyage, you as the captain of a sailing vessel, and your port destination as the goal of your voyage. Your heading is determined by your destination port (your goal). Success is measured by your progress towards that specific goal. It all starts with a goal.

Naturally, there are different types of marketing campaigns and different types of marketing goals.

How can anyone say whether a marketing campaign is a success, or not, without first understanding the goal of said campaign?

It all starts with a worthwhile goal.

Is your marketing goal to increase sales? If so, by what specific amount?

Is your goal to increase market share? If so, by what percentage?

Is your goal to increase total profits? If so, by what amount?

What is the time frame of your objective?

A goal needs to have a measurable objective, and a time frame for achieving that objective. Without those elements there is no means or method to measure success. It all starts with a goal.

You are not marketing if you are not measuring, and you cannot measure success without first having a goal. It all starts with a goal.

Once you have a goal, there will be no need to ask on a forum how to measure success, it will be quite obvious.

And no, ROI, is not a good choice for a goal.

ROI is just a ratio, a diagnostic metric, not an objective worthy of a marketing goal. Think of it as a ratio of speed against wind and water currents that are taking you off course. Good to know, but not a destination, and not very useful as a goal for a sea voyage.

A good goal needs to be something that represents real value, not a diagnostic metric like ROI.

HTH,

Don Burk

Focus less on measuring success and more on publishing targeted helpful content, promoting other companies as much as you promote yourself and engaging folks 1 to 1, those folks being people who shared or Liked or commented on your content. Then no measuring will be needed; you'll see sales and traffic before your eyes, on social media sites.

It depends on business to business and product to product. We measure our social media marketing success via google analytic, we analyze them, work on those factors needed to enhance business productivity etc.
Traffic, competition level and little more factors are considered for ROI. Cost also varies business and products to products.


Thanks

by checking leads and traffic report they measure success of his campaign.

Social Media Marketing ROI should not be just in terms of leads you have captured but also through the engagement that you have achieved.

The social media marketing doesn't cost anything. If you're using the word cost, you implying a loss, and I would assume you are in business to make a profit am I right? In that case we will call it an investment, and this all depends on what our goals are. It is very simple to determine how many clicks it will take to get a sale out of a pool of one hundred people etc when we are testing, ...then take that information and scale up to reach our goals. Heres the deal,if you are trying to average five thousand dollars a month or more with your business. Let me ask you a question, do you think it would be more wiser to sell a bunch of random products that are less than one hundred dollars a piece, or sell high ticket offers that costs 1500 dollars a piece> You would agree that it would much easier to reach our goals selling high ticket items. That is all to be considered when you are spending money on traffic as well, ask yourself if you are truly making more money from advertising than you are putting by tracking, measuring and take accountability of every little detail. Earning per click, click through rate, your cost per customer, how much money are you making when the sale is made...where are you in comparison to this time last month? These are the type of questions that I would consistently ask so that we are able to tailor the right answer for that question. But at the end of the day, determine what your thirty, sixty, and ninety days goals are, and make a decision.

This is a very difficult question.
I would say most larger companies aren't thinking ROi when it comes to social media, imo most are thinking branding, exposure, etc