Social ROI answers whether social spend and labor create business value — revenue, qualified leads, or saved support cost — not only reach.

Formula

ROI = (Revenue or value − Investment) / Investment × 100

Investment = ads + tools + creator fees + estimated staff hours.
Value = attributed sales, lead value × close rate, or ticket deflection.

Metric ladder

Reach → Engagement → Clicks/DMs → Leads → Customers → LTV

Climb the ladder in reporting; executives care about the bottom rungs.

Attribution honesty

Social often assists. Use UTMs, unique codes, “How did you hear?” on WhatsApp scripts, and platform + GA4 together. Last-click will under-credit awareness Reels.

Case study: NPR worked example (online apparel)

  • Ad spend: NPR 40,000
  • Creators: NPR 15,000
  • Staff time: NPR 10,000
  • Investment: NPR 65,000
  • Tracked sales from codes/UTMs: NPR 2,10,000

ROI = (210000 − 65000) / 65000 × 100 ≈ 223%

They also logged 180 WhatsApp chats; sales closed 42 (23%). Next month they optimized reply templates before increasing budget — efficiency before scale.

Nepal practice: Assign a lead value (e.g. average order × close rate) for service businesses so message campaigns have an ROI, not only “conversations started.”