Social media isn’t free. It takes a lot of time to run a successful social media marketing campaign, and that time takes resources away from other activities. This means that social media needs to be able to pull its own weight by passing the FRY test.
Jesse Stanchak of Smart Blog on Social Media recently published an article on something many businesses seem to forget: the real purpose of social media marketing. Often, self-proclaimed “social media gurus” try to pretend that ROI stands for “return on involvement” or “return on innovation.” This is definitely not the case. ROI stand for “return on investment.” This means money. As Stanchak points out, “Word of mouth is not money. Engagement is not money. Buzz is not money.” Unless there is a conversion, all these things are ultimately worthless. Stanchak offers three ways that this can happen using the FRY test.
Frequency. Reach. Yield.
Stanchak argues that all social media marketing campaigns need to be able to pass the “FRY” test in order to be successful. Social media must either increase how often your consumers buy from you (frequency), increase the total number of people that buy from you (reach), or increase the amount your consumers spend on you (yield). If your social media isn’t passing the “FRY” test, it isn’t generating ROI.
The problem with this test, however, is that measuring exactly how much your social media marketing campaign has increased your FRY rating can be difficult. Luckily, Jesse Stanchak provides a slide show presentation of how to accomplish this.
