Are Your Products or Services Selling Properly on Social Media?

No matter what type of products or services you sell, I’m guessing that your brand or business is actively engaged on social media. 

And, whether you’re using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Tik Tok, these platforms genuinely are some of the best tools available for building communities of like-minded people around your brand while also promoting your products or services to the world! 

At the click of a button, even the newest brands can easily connect with hundreds, even thousands of potential customers when posting or sharing content on social media. 

However, just because you’re posting about the things you sell, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be making sales or generating any revenue through your social media efforts. 

So, how can you tell if your products or services are selling the way they should? 

Below, we’re looking at a few key performance indicators you can use to measure the success of your social media efforts. 

Audience Engagement – Likes, Comments, And Shares

You’ll often hear about likes, comments, and shares being referred to as vanity metrics. 

In other words, these metrics don’t necessarily have anything to do with conversion rates or sales. 

However, they are important metrics that can help you determine whether or not your followers are interested in the content you’ve been posting. 

For instance, if your posts regularly get higher levels of engagement, you can be assured that you’re doing something right. 

However, if you’re posting a lot of content and nobody likes, comments on, or shares anything, it could be a sign that it’s time to rethink your content. 

Note that knowing your average engagement rates will also help you understand if other aspects of your marketing and branding efforts are effective, including your logos, brand messaging, etc. Create custom logos here: https://www.logocreator.io

Return On Investment (ROI)

Whether you’re paying somebody to manage your social media presence or you’re investing in pay-per-click advertising, it’s essential to keep an eye on how much money you’re spending, as well as how much you’re generating based on your spending. 

The best way to track this is to measure your social media ROI or the overall return on investment of your time and money spent on social media. 

To calculate your social media ROI, you’ll need to divide the total value or revenue you’ve generated through your social media efforts by the total that you’ve spent on those efforts. 

So, for instance, suppose you generated $5,000 last month from your social media efforts. 

However, you spent $2,000 on PPC ads. 

Therefore, your ROI would be calculated as follows: $5,000 (revenue) / $2,000 (ad spend) = 2.5%

Using this calculation, you can estimate that for everything $1 you invest into social media marketing, you’ll be able to generate a 2.5% ROI on that investment. 

If you’re just getting started with ads and spending money on your marketing efforts, it’s essential to realize that you might not see great returns right away. 

It takes time, effort, and you’ll need to revise your overall approach regularly. 

The Importance Of Slow And Steady Growth

With that said, whether your products or services are selling properly really depends on a wide range of factors, including your niche, your target audience, the time of year, and more. 

However, more important than seeing astronomical sales and non-stop conversion, it’s more important that your efforts show slow and steady growth. 

Think about it this way; if you’ve just launched your brand on social media, it will take some time before your followers start to know and remember who you are. 

Therefore, you probably won’t make very many sales until your followers start warming up to you. 

Either way, the key is to be actively engaged on social media, posting content and communicating with your audience regularly. 

And then, regularly reviewing your social media analytics, ROI, and any other metrics that will help you better evaluate whether or not your products or services are selling the way they should! 

If you want a primer on social media marketing, Spice Catalyst has a course for that:  Social Media Marketing Demystified: Understand and Write Your Social Media Marketing Plan.