PR and marketers can better measure how social media impacts key business objectives. Photo credit: Randen Pedersen
Companies continue to struggle with measurement of social media marketing. Even as they dedicate larger portions of their marketing and PR budgets to social media, few companies can show how much social media impacts business outcomes.
Many businesses continue to use vanity metrics such as the number of Twitter followers and Facebook likes. Those numbers are posted on the social networks, are easy to aggregate, and show obvious trends. Metrics that impact sales and ROI, such as how many conversions a social media channel drives, are not nearly as easy to determine.
The CMO Survey shows a trend of marketers opting for engagement metrics over sales- and profit-oriented numbers.
The percentage of marketers using their number of friends/followers increased the most (+88%). Other metrics seeing gains were net promoter score (+71%), buzz indicators (+54%), and product/service ratings (+71%).
Fewer companies used purchase activities or financial outcomes, such as profits or revenue, to judge social media marketing. “Hits/visits/page views” is the most widespread metric, followed by 6.0.7 percent of survey respondents.
These results, however, tell little about the impact of social media marketing on business outcomes. The lack of any real business insight from vanity metrics should prod companies to implement new processes and metrics now to better measure their social media marketing.
Just 15 percent of marketers said they’ve been able to quantify the impact of social media on their businesses, according to The CMO Survey. The low percentage is not surprising, considering social media is relatively new marketing tool, write Becky Ross and Shannon Gorman, MBA students at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, in an article for Forbes.
Interviews of social media experts conducted as part of The CMO Survey, sponsored by the American Marketing Association, Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and McKinsey Inc., yielded valuable recommendations on handling social media metrics. Here are the key steps:
Match metrics to goals. Establish specific goals for each campaign and base metrics on those goals. If a campaign is supposed to increase brand awareness, use a metric for engagement. If it is intended to drive purchase, conversion rates are more suitable.
Validate metrics. Make sure the chosen metrics measure what they are supposed to. For instance, is engagement measured by the number of likes or shares? Link all metrics to key outcomes.
Find leading indicators. Social media metrics like page views, click-throughs, comments, shares, and likes, are not totally useless. Often, they can be leading indicators of sales outcomes. Companies can track those numbers to predict if marketing strategies will succeed.
Get a dashboard. Most companies track metrics from different sources. A social media monitoring dashboard saves time and provides real-time access to trending metrics by presenting a comprehensive view of the performance. A dashboard also makes it easier to slice, dice, filter, display and interpret the data.
Stick with your metrics. Focus on a handful of tracking tools that meet your goals and that you validated. Shifting between different metrics hampers analysis and wastes resources.
Conduct experiments. Measurement trials help companies better understand the value of social media. For instance, test consumer activity before and after a social media campaign to measure performance. Compare changes in an engaged group against a control group with similar characteristics. Compare campaign results across geographies or demographics to better understand the target audiences.
Invest in measurement. Companies spend just 2.3 percent of their marketing budgets on measuring ROI. If companies are to understand the impact of social media, investment in analytics is essential. That investment can entail in-house staff, agencies, tools and technology, models and customer databases.
Bottom Line: Current “easy” metrics and measurement of social media delivers bragging rights, but little business insight. PR and marketers can take concrete steps to better measure the impact of social media on key business objectives.
William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.
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