How Do You Measure Social Media ROI?

Few questions have the ability to make a marketing meeting uncomfortable quite like:

“What's the ROI?”

It's also a completely reasonable question.

If a business is investing money in social, it should understand what that investment is achieving.

The problem comes when we pretend every part of social should produce exactly the same type of return in exactly the same timeframe.

You need to know the job before you measure the result

If you're running a campaign designed to drive online sales, revenue is clearly important.

If you're entering a new market and using social to establish awareness, judging the entire strategy on immediate purchases doesn't make much sense.

Measurement has to reflect the objective.

It sounds obvious, but plenty of reporting starts the other way around: looking at whatever data the platform provides and then trying to decide which numbers look best.

Social rarely exists in a neat funnel

Someone watches your video.

Three weeks later they see another.

Then an ad.

Then they read the comments.

Then they Google your brand.

Eventually they buy.

Which post gets the credit?

Attribution models would love there to be one clean answer.

Human behaviour isn't always that tidy.

That's why we'd be cautious about treating last-click attribution as the complete picture.

That doesn't mean brand activity gets a free pass

There's a danger in taking the argument too far.

“It's brand building” shouldn't become an excuse for never demonstrating value.

We still need evidence.

Relevant reach, attention, engagement, branded search, website behaviour, leads, conversion and revenue can all tell us different things.

The important part is understanding what each metric can and can't prove.

Shaka in practice

Our work with Gardener’s Dream is a great example of this.

A bespoke blend of full creative with a performance ecosystem, every creative asset had a role.

Every data point informed the next iteration - making sure that we created a different system to ensure scalability.

A system where creative was the primary optimisation signal.

With creative that explored new hooks, new product stories, new formats, and new emotional angles, the algorithm changed to continuously find new pockets of intent instead of fighting over the same exhausted audiences.

Not only did this involve users with a wide array of interests and styles to explore the Gardener’s Dream communities across socials, it also brought in some serious coin. 

In just 6 months, 1M+ revenue generated, 22K+ sales, and ROAS lifted. Cha-ching!

Reporting should change what you do next

This is probably our biggest issue with social reporting.

A report shouldn't simply document that everybody was busy last month.

It should tell us something.

What worked?

What didn't?

What surprised us?

What are we changing?

That's when measurement becomes useful.

ROI matters.

But measuring it properly requires a better question than simply asking how many people clicked “buy” immediately after seeing a post.