Calculating The ROI for B2B Social Media Marketing

B2B firms are increasingly using social media liked LinkedIn, Twitter and other channels to drive sales. But how do you justify the time and effort? And how much should you spend on social media in comparison to your other sales and marketing activities?

B2B Technology Marketing research firm MarketingSherpa published a report in 2011 that answers the question.

To calculate the potential Return on Investment, they suggest you use the formula

(Value Gained from Investment – Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment = RoI

For example:

• Allocate marketing time and effort of $15,000 to a social media marketing campaign
• Generate 500 qualified leads from this effort at a value of $150 per lead, giving a total value of $75,000
• then your RoI = (75k – 15k)/15k = 400% return on investment.

You can read more in the MarketingSherpa report “CMO Perspsectives on Social Media RoI“