1. J A N U A R Y 1 9, 2 0 1 2
Measuring Social
Media Success
Sponsored by:
Debra Aho Williamson
Principal Analyst
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

2. What we’ll look at today…
1) Why it’s important to get measurement
right
2) The four problems of measurement today
3) Metrics for success: Three things all
marketers should do
4) How to take measurement to the next
level
Twitter: #eMwebinar ©2012 eMarketer Inc.

3. What’s wrong with social media
measurement? A snapshot
11 social
“Not a single one of the
measurement vendors could help them
vendors justify the spend that
Big company they’d made in their
tools, much less their
social campaigns.”
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

4. The Importance of
Social Media
Measurement
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

5. Marketers believe social media will
bring a range of benefits …
… if they can only unlock the key to success.
“Global executives attribute 52% of their brand’s
reputation to how social it is online today, up from
45% one year ago.”
“They project that 65% of their brand’s reputation will
come from its online sociability in three years.”
Source: Socializing Your Brand: A Brand’s Guide to Sociability, October 2011
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

6. Measurement and budget go hand in
hand
Marketers
need proof
that social
media
works, so
they can feel
comfortable
continuing to
invest.
Trial: organization does not have a process or guidelines for performing social marketing. Transition: organization has an informal process with a
few guidelines it sporadically performs. Strategic: organization has a formal process with thorough guidelines it routinely performs.
Twitter: #eMwebinar ©2012 eMarketer Inc.

7. The Marketers’ Top Two Digital
rewards Marketing Challenges
can be
great, but #1
Generating and
the risks leveraging deep customer
are high. insights is a necessity to
Accurately compete effectively
measuring
social #2
media is a Managing brand health and
reputation is harder when social
must. media plays an important role in
marketing
Source: McKinsey & Company “McKinsey Quarterly,” November 2011
Image: fotographic1980 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net ©2012 eMarketer Inc.

8. Social Media
Measurement Today
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

9. Here’s what marketers say:
 Social media measurement is not very
effective. Even though there are many ways to
measure, concrete success metrics remain elusive.
 Fan count is still a top metric. 60% of marketers
use friends, followers or “likes” as a success measure
(Chief Marketer, 2011).
 The ROI question is unanswered. Return on
investment is a top challenge of social media
marketing, making budgeting difficult.
 We don’t know what tools to use. One tool or
several?
Twitter: #eMwebinar ©2012 eMarketer Inc.

10. Marketers in their own words
“I wish I could say there are many best
practices and case studies out there, but
right now we are still at the infancy stage
of defining a framework for social media
measurement.”
“I don’t think anybody’s really cracked the
code about how these types of online tools
directly impact revenue or ROI.”
“We’d like to be able to say that because
we launched a Facebook sampling tab
we’ve increased our fan count and
increased sales by a certain
percentage, but we’re not in that place
yet to have those sorts of metrics.”
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

11. Only 13% of marketers say they are
‘very effective’ at measuring results
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

12. Marketers are more apt to count fans
and ‘likes’ than sales
No change
from 2010
3 points
lower than
2010
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

13. Measuring
social
media
ROI is
frequently
cited as a
challenge
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

14. Marketers do not know what tools to use
to measure success
Twitter: #eMwebinar ©2012 eMarketer Inc.

15. TKTK
How can social
media marketers
get to the metrics
that matter?
Credit: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

16. Measurement must move beyond the
basics and prove business value
“We have gotten to the point where
brands and companies are making
decisions on whether to increase
investment in a channel that is receiving
a huge amount of consumer attention. It’s
very important to start to move toward
measuring in a better, more business-
value-focused way.”
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

17. Three Things Every
Marketer Should Do
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

18. 1) Start measuring
Don’t assume it’s impossible
 39% of worldwide retailers don’t measure
social media marketing. (Economist Intelligence
Unit, April 2011)
 36% of UK B2B marketers don’t measure.
(PricewaterhouseCoopers, September 2011)
 6.9% of high-revenue companies worldwide*
don’t measure. (CMO Club/Bazaarvoice, 2011)
* half of respondents worked for companies with $1 billion+ in sales
Image: nattavut / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

19. The measurement landscape is
crowded—but navigable
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

20. 2) Don’t wait for the silver bullet
Because businesses use social media for so many reasons
and goals, there may never be a single success metric.
Twitter: #eMwebinar ©2012 eMarketer Inc.

21. Every social media effort should start
with clear goals and KPIs
Experienced marketers use multiple metrics
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

22. 3) Demand that your marketing partners
play a larger role
The days of recommending social as an
add-on without a clear set of goals are gone
“The bigger consultancies and agencies—
out of self-defense—will start to develop
some pretty good methodologies and
mental models for social performance and
social ROI.”
—Erik Huddleston, Dachis Group CTO
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

23. Some are
already
stepping
up to the
challenge
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

24. How to Take
Measurement to the
Next Level
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

25. Three goals for increasing measurement
sophistication in 2012
 It’s not the fans, it’s what you do with them.
Understand who your brand followers are and how
influential they can be on your behalf.
 Go beyond brand metrics. The more marketers
can work toward understanding how social media
impacts actual business, the better.
 Integrate social analytics and marketing
analytics. Understand how social media can make
other media spending more efficient, and how online
buzz relates to overall marketing performance.
Twitter: #eMwebinar ©2012 eMarketer Inc.

26. 1) It’s not the fans, it’s what you do with
them
Understand who
your brand
followers are
and how they
can be
influential on
your behalf.
Focus on
measuring
leads, sales and
revenue.
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

27. Only
28% of
marketers
track the
number of
people who
contribute
to a
brand’s
social
community
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

28. 2) Track more than just brand metrics
 Awareness and engagement may be easier to
measure, but social media can do more. Harder
metrics can show social’s contribution to business results.
 Make sales an objective. Only 17% of marketers use
sales or leads as a success metric. (Econsultancy/SEMPO)
“Sales are what matter to our agents.
You can only measure how many
people or how many positive
comments for so long before people
start to question it, especially in this economy.”
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

29. Case study: Measuring the impact of
buzz on CPG sales
Questions:
 How does an increase in positive online buzz impact CPG sales?
 How does negative buzz impact sales?
 How long can the effect be expected to last?
Methodology:
Gathered point-of-sale sales data and online buzz for two brands:
Lay’s chips and Skinny Cow ice cream
Twitter: #eMwebinar ©2012 eMarketer Inc.

30. Case study: Results
Finding #1:
Incremental sales increases correlate to the amount of online buzz
Finding #2:
An ad campaign can trigger online buzz, which in turn can cause a
sales surge
Next steps:
 Study campaigns with less social activity to determine the
influence of buzz
 Incorporate ad campaign data to better filter out the impact of
advertising vs. buzz
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

31. 3) Integrate social analytics with other
analytics to help build future business
Can buzz
generate leads?
And save
money, too?
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

32. Jim Farley, Ford’s global marketing
chief:
“We’re shifting the timing of our [ad]
spend. Social media allows us to start to
build a community months before a
vehicle goes on sale. We learned this
with the Fiesta Movement and we are
continuing to perfect the model.”
If a social campaign drives broad
awareness “we can take the traditional
media [spending] down a notch.”
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

33. Marketers
have an
opportunity
to integrate
social
analytics
just as
they have
integrated
social
media into
marketing
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

34. Key Takeaways
©2012 eMarketer Inc.

35. Getting to the metrics that matter
Social media measurement has evolved, but still doesn’t satisfy
most marketers. The effectiveness question remains top of mind.
Measurement and budget go hand in hand. Marketers need adequate
metrics to be able to determine budget allocations.
Marketers are still too reliant on counting what is easy to
measure. Counting fans and followers is fine as a basic benchmark
metric, but marketers must strive to understand what those hand-raisers do for
them.
Marketers must apply business-level analysis to social media
measurement. Understanding social media’s effect on a company’s bottom
line is critical. As SymphonyIRI and Ford have shown, it’s getting easier to
consider the relative influence of social media on lead generation and sales.
Twitter: #eMwebinar ©2012 eMarketer Inc.

36. CFO vs. CMO

37. Powerful Intelligence
For Social & Search Advertising

38. Real-Time Data So Marketers Can…
Prove ROI
Make Better Ad Decisions
Surface Customer Insights

39. Clickable 4.0 Workflow
Ads Layer
Insights CompanyGraph ™
Data Layer
CRM
Learn more: mkalehoff@clickable.com

40. Measuring Social Media Success
Questions & Answers
Registrants will receive an email tomorrow that includes a link to view
the deck and webinar recording.
For more discussion, please join us after the webinar on Twitter.
To learn about eMarketer Total Access please visit www.emarketer.com/products
or contact us: (800) 405-0844 or webinars@emarketer.com
Presented by: Sponsored by:
Debra Aho Williamson
Principal Analyst, eMarketer, Inc.
Twitter Hashtag: #eMwebinar
©2011 eMarketer Inc.