Measuring social media ROI can be daunting. If you don’t set goals, it’s like going to target practice without a target! Katy Katz of SmartBug Media explores this topic in-depth at the 2017 Rocks Digital Marketing Conference.
How to Slay Your Social Media Goals with Metrics
First, everyone needs to agree that it’s important to set goals when you’re measuring your social media metrics. Clients want to know what ROI they are getting from social media. Tracking goals is the indicator that tells them whether what they’re doing with their social media is working or not.
How Do You Set Social Media Goals that Matter?
When it comes to marketing, you need to set relevant, measurable goals that apply to your plans and also to the company objectives. Most of the time, that’s revenue, but how many shares or likes equals a conversion? How many “favorites” equals actual sales? Let’s get started.
- Key Performance Indicator (KPI) – a quantifiable measure used to evaluate the success of an organization. This is your number one goal. (In the case of Arya Stark, that goal is revenge. That’s probably not your marketing goal, though…)
- Objectives and Key Results (OKR) – incremental measurements on the way. (For Arya, this is her list of people she’s slaying to get revenge. Your OKR will be different from Arya’s here, as well).
One of the easiest mistakes you can make in social media is mistaking your OKR for your KPI. Most of the time, in business, your number one goal is going to be revenue/profit.
60% of businesses are not able to track ROI from social media.
How do you make things that are engaging that equal revenue driving actions?
We have turned social media into a marketing dump. What social media could be is a meaningful daily connection which converts to brand familiarity, which feeds brand loyalty.
- 52% are seeing a decline in Facebook traffic.
- 2% = actual organic reach on Facebook.
If you want to tie your social goals to revenue, make targeted posts and optimize posts for conversion goals.
Paid Posts on Social Platforms Allow You
- to target a new audience for strategic growth
- to optimize a post for conversion goals
- to set a revenue-based objective and measure to it
Bottom line – Paid social will align to revenue KPIs.
Time has ceased, space has vanished, and we now live in a global village. Measurement success starts with asking the right questions.
Customer success is when customers achieve their desired outcomes through their interactions with your company.
Increase Social Media Customer Success
Utility + Presence + Engagement
- It takes an average of 6–8 touches to convert a lead to a sale.
- It’s 25% more expensive to attract new customers than to retain existing customers.
- A 5% increase in customer retention leads to a 24–95% increase in PROFITS.
Know your personas (fictional representations of your target customers). It’s a picture you paint based on research and interviews with actual customers. A persona goes beyond basic demographics to include the intangible elements that make a person tick.
Target Audience Personas
- Job – what is their role in their company?
- Education
- Lifestyle – what are their hobbies? What do they do for fun?
- General Demographics – age range, gender, where do they live?
- Identifier – industry terms they respond to, personality traits, goals and aspirations.
- Behavior – where do they spend their time online? How do they engage/communicate?
When you understand your customer you can communicate. You will be creating engaging content that sparks dialogues.
Recommend Tools for Social Sharing and Metrics Tracking
- Hootsuite
- HubSpot
- Google Analytics
- Buffer
IMPORTANT: Test, Measure, Test Again. (repeat!)
Arya is slaying her goals. Using what you’ve learned at Rocks Digital, you can do the same!
View Katy’s slides here:
