Relationship ROI

Updated: June 10, 2009

I've found that this marketing role is often a very misunderstood and unappreciated. In many companies, even large established firms, field sales reps still think of the marketing department as a toy store or creative services department or a ticket outlet. "I'm going to my customers' site; can you make me a customized flier on our product and give me some cool giveaways? And can you get us tickets to the next Giants game, too?" Ugh.

There are multiple reasons for this lack of understanding and appreciation. In the past, marketing departments weren't able to effectively convince upper management that they were adding value or, as they like to say, contributing to the bottom line revenue goals. Nowadays, there are many quantitative tools and solutions that offer various methods to measure your marketing ROI. I'll examine some of those tools in future blog posts. So how does a modern day marketer convince their C-level management on the ROI of their social media efforts?

"One way to think about your ROI on your social media efforts is that the traffic you get on your blog and your You-tube videos and the number of followers you have on Twitter is creating relationship ROI," advises Lorrie Thomas, Web Marketing Therapist. "It's building and reinforcing your brand and helping readers to know you, like you and trust you. These are three key components of a good social media relationship."

CEOs may not have a strong grasp of marketing ROI but they certainly understand the importance of building key relationships. Just think about their love of golf and schmoozing with other C-level executives. They may not be talking overtly about their company and its solutions, but they are building relationships, helping other executives get to know who they are and feel good about the company. It's a way of building trust and openness to smooth the way for business to happen.

You can build that relationship and have your blogs feed automatically into Twitter and FaceBook. You can even track the conversion process as readers follow you all the way to your website. It's a beautiful thing to be able to easily make this happen with a few mouse clicks.

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