Is your Social Media Program Driving Sales?

Last week we traveled to visit one of our clients, a national brand in the luxury home products category, for a Social Media Training with the executives.  The half-day training session was designed to share with our client an updated report on the landscape of Social Media.  Although the VP of Sales & Marketing understands clearly the significant power of Social Media, we also needed to share examples of how high-end brands are capitalizing on the new “word of mouth on steroids” and how that is relating to sales.  Part of my responsibility within the training was to share case studies and to talk about measurement.  We shared that the return in Social Media is not just direct sales, which the program should drive, the return may be an increase in brand equity, fidelity and loyalty or increased brand perception, as shown in the chart below provided by w3haus.

However, we did share some impressive stats on how companies have directly tied sales to their Social Media efforts and the data was music to the client’s ears.  As reported by blogger Radha Giri, here are some examples of how major brands are harnessing the power of Social Media to drive sales:

• Southwest Airlines @SouthwestAir: Southwest Airlines attributes more than $1 million in additional ticket sales to its presence on Twitter.
• Marriott: Marriott has made more than $5 million in bookings from people who clicked through to the reservation page from Marriott’s blog.
• Dell @DellOutlet: Dell Outlet made more than $6.5M sale through its Twitter presence..
• Naked Pizza @NakedPizza: 68.60% of total dollar sales for Naked Pizza came from customers who said they are “calling from twitter”.
• Blendtec: Increased sales 5x by running the humorous “Will it Blend” Videos on YouTube.

So, how can you apply what these major brands have done successfully? If your products can’t be purchased online, how can you make your sales cycle more social? If you’re not measuring the success of your Social Media efforts, what reason is there for executives to invest socially? Remember that although making true engagement and connections online is the key to social media, your efforts should move the needle!