Booksellers Blog

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ROI. “Return on Investment.” It’s a phrase that comes up over and over again when reading about social media and online marketing initiatives. Everyone wants to know how to measure it. The truth is, it’s not always easy to measure.

If you were an online-only retailer and your social media efforts were focused solely on getting people to your website to buy your products, you could probably track your effectiveness with some accuracy. You could follow a link from your blog to your website, see what products they clicked on, and then follow the trail to the “buy now” button, to the order and shipping.

But of course, with a brick and mortar store, it’s more difficult.  Do you know that the customer who just spent $100 came in because of your latest blog post? However, look at the marketing efforts you’ve undertaken in the past. Were those easily measurable? Do you know how many customers came in because of an ad you placed in the local paper, or because of your Yellow Pages ad?

So how can you measure the effectiveness of a blog?

The best means of measurement that I’ve heard lately was from Christopher S. Penn on the Marketing Over Coffee podcast. Chris is a social media and marketing ninja, having brought in millions of dollars to his employer, The Student Loan Network, mainly through his Financial Aid Podcast. Chris has all sorts of measurement tools and software at his disposal. But in reading an old book on sales strategy, he came across what he thinks is the key to measuring the ROI of social media: ask your customers, “How did you hear about us?”

It sounds simple, but when was the last time you asked that question of your customers?

Some other ways to measure results

There are also other things that you can measure to see if your efforts are worth the time that you are spending.

• Are customers mentioning your blog?
• Are you receiving emails through your “contact us” link on your blog? If you have a separate email address for blog inquiries, this is an easy one to track.
• Are customers seeking out specific booksellers?
• Are you higher up in Google rankings for your keywords? It’s a good idea to take a snapshot of google results before you launch your blog, and then check it several months later.
• Are you seeing traffic to your website from your blog? Has traffic to your website increased? Have online or phone orders increased?
• Are you getting media attention as a result of posts on your blog? A feature article in a local newspaper is worth more than several paid ads in the same paper.
• Are you seeing increased attendance at author events?
• Are people linking to your blog? Count your inbound links, both to your blog and your website. Have they increased?
• Are people leaving comments on your blog? The more they comment, the more engaged they are. Note that some blog posts are better at eliciting comments than others. I liked to end with a question or open ended statement,  so that others can weigh in. Sometimes, though, there’s just nothing left to say. If a post does not get comments, it does not mean that it’s a bad or ineffective post. If you use this means of measurement, it should be an overall level of commenting over many posts.
• Is the number of subscribers to your blog steadily increasing? Then people are finding your content and deeming it valuable enough to regularly receive it.
• Do you see a bump in sales when you feature a book on your blog? This is particularly significant when it’s a backlist book that you know has had no other promotion recently.
• Have you solved customer service problems through your blog, either by reaching out to someone who left a comment, or by engaging with a customer who contacted you through your blog?  Has a happy customer posted on his or her blog about your handling of a situation?
• Have you gotten ideas about your customers needs and wants? The cost of a traditional, professionally-led focus group is very high. If you get this type of value from your blog, you can count it as a success.
• Has one or more members of your staff become re-energized and enthusiastic as a result of working on your store’s social media efforts?

As you experiment, you may find other ways to measure your effectiveness.  If you currently have a blog, how are you evaluating your efforts? Have you benchmarked your Google results and number of links to your website?

If you have other thoughts, I’d love to hear them.