Social ROI is a mystery for most marketers, but one Brafton client demonstrates how LinkedIn can fuel measurable results.

Industry: Financial services
Content: Linkedin social marketing
Highlights: Social content drives referral traffic

It’s easy to say social media marketing generates results for businesses, but it’s another story to have the numbers that back the claim. Unfortunately, around 88 percent of marketers cannot clearly identify their social ROI to determine when their content is sparking meaningful engagement or just contributing to the collective noise online. The results one Brafton client saw after launching a LinkedIn campaign show how consistent conversation can drive recognizable results.

The customer shared headlines from its custom content on LinkedIn, but also participated in weekly community discussions. While this might seem like minimal engagement, it saw clear-cut results in terms of both conversions and website traffic.

Find the right social group and start sharing

If a brand rep showed up to any social gathering and started spouting off the benefits of its products and services, audiences would probably be un-receptive. The same principle applies to social networks. Companies need to first find the right audience, and then give them something worth listening to.

Brands will become more successful in social media marketing if they participate in relevant discussions.

The client did just this – vetting LinkedIn discussions to find forums that aligned with its offerings and then participating on a weekly basis. When it comes to social media marketing, participation can take many forms, including:

  • Links to news articles, blog posts or resources
  • Answers to questions posed by forum users
  • Proprietary research that will benefit prospects

Monitor result to measure social success

Participation is half the battle. The other half is monitoring and measuring results. We helped this client track its social wins through content analytics reports, setting up filters that tracked social media referral traffic and visits coming from LinkedIn specifically.

The customer saw its LinkedIn referral traffic increase 295 percent by participating in discussions.

Comparing year-over-year data, the customer saw its LinkedIn referral traffic increase 295 percent with this level of participation. This signals that people reading the social content shared on LinkedIn motivated a significant number of readers to click back to the company’s pages to read or learn more. The client also experienced a 14 percent lift in socially assisted conversions, indicating those visitors were qualified prospects that were moved to act.

Link up with target audiences for social success

By tapping into the right social audiences and sharing valuable information, the client was able to reach qualified consumers and direct them back to the company website. This helps brands demonstrate their knowledge about the field and connect with decision makers who are in a position to buy, but need a reason to act.

Lauren Kaye is a Marketing Editor at Brafton Inc. She studied creative and technical writing at Virginia Tech before pursuing the digital frontier and finding content marketing was the best place to put her passions to work. Lauren also writes creative short fiction, hikes in New England and appreciates a good book recommendation.