How to boost event ROI from social media

As the growth director and founder of Attention Experts, George Hawwa helps companies from around the world in over 30 different industries develop ROI strategies from social media campaigns.

Hawwa recently spoke at The Meetings Show APAC, sharing invaluable insight about social media and marketing campaigns.

Obsolete metrics must go

For example, the number of followers, comments, shares and likes are incorrect KPIs for developing a successful social media marketing campaign; rates have dropped by 40% and the Meta algorithm does not currently favour these metrics.

However, what the algorithm looks out for is content consumption via what he referred to as “covert engagement”. This includes metrics such as video watch time, video views, link clicks, and profile visits, and website visits, with its number one goal to keep people on the platform for longer.

Another such measurement is hangtime, or how long someone stays on a post. Said Hawwa: “For every millisecond you achieve that, you are now getting brownie points for the algorithm. So, you've got to understand the mechanics of these platforms and how they tick to get distribution of your content to high quality audiences, to audiences that will actually buy your products.”

What companies need to understand, Hawwa stressed, is that the algorithm protects itself from businesses that aren’t utilising it properly and keeping people on the platform for longer. In other words, eyeballs on a page are the new name of the game.

“You’ve got to be seen to be building a community and keeping people engaged,” he said. “You don’t actually have to be achieving that! You just need to be showing the algorithm; It’s not about who spends the most money, but about who actually follows best practices.”

In the vein of community-building, businesses that seem to have a genuine, empathetic connection with friends, family, and the general audience do the best on social media, from an ROI perspective.

Trust – the best marketing campaign

So far, Singaporean and Australian users place the highest priorities in privacy protection, and event planners should be transparent about their data usage and audience engagement. For example, Hawwa suggests that companies should explain why the cookies – which are small pieces of text the website visited sends to a user’s browser, helping the website remember information about the visit and making subsequent returns to the website easier – which are accepted are for their best interests.

For businesses that are just starting out, take note: Meta will start these fresh profiles off by introducing a low-quality audience to avoid risking higher-quality audiences that it saves for its best advertisers.

At this stage, Hawwa says, the new brands will just be sold advertising – and if the cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM) is trending upwards, that’s a bad sign.

“[What this means] is Facebook is trying to minimise this risk and is making your advertising more expensive to minimise the amount of people that will see you; that’s another indicator that the algorithm does not like you,” he shared. “So, keep an eye on that for the health of the algorithm score! Spend 70% of your time on optimisation and analysis, not chasing content – data is key for the algorithm.”

To know if a social media marketing campaign is working, listen out for word of mouth, Hawwa says. During events, planners should not give delegates a list of channels to tick when asking them how they found out about an event. Since people often forget how they found out about an event, direct questions such as “Did you find out about us on Instagram?” are more effective.

Spend big on marketing and advertising

Between events, brands should prioritise maintenance marketing, and Hawwa encourages spending money on maintenance, advertising, and marketing to databases between events. “Once we get 20-25 touch points for users – which usually takes about six months to develop – we get an increase in sales leads and inquiries,” he said.

This means that if businesses aren’t seeing high ticket sales for social media, inquiries or leads, odds are they’re having engagement problems, and haven’t been engaging with the right audience.

To be relevant, content cannot be older than two weeks, and should position the brand as the thought leader in its relevant industry. “If you’re running an event show on finance, your event needs to show people what you know about that,” said Hawwa, adding that paid and organic content will help put these leadership pieces front and centre.

However, users don’t like to be bombarded with content – Hawwa recommends limiting content calendars to five pieces of content per week, from promotional branding and business benefits to thought leadership videos and success stories, and scheduling these posts up to two weeks in advance.

Maintenance marketing is crucial, but advertising is where brands will see results. If a business relies solely on organic content with no paid ads, Hawwa warns, they might only be seen once or twice a month – and that’s even with the recommended five posts per week.

The trick is to bring in the ads: “If you do five posts a week in paid ads daily, you’ll be seen five times a month – that’s where you’re going to get your ROI, and you can then do your re-marketing, create touch points and affinity, and develop sales leads and inquiries.”