3. Social advertising attracts billions of marketing
dollars, and a growing % of digital budgets globally
6.9
9.1
11.4
14.1
2012 2013 2014 2015
Social Network Ad Spending, Worldwide (Billions)
Source: Barclays Capital, May 2013
5. In order to measure return in a meaningful way,
a clear objective must first exist
What does success look like to us?
• Uplift in brand awareness?
• Increase brand engagement?
• Lead generation?
• Improve customer satisfaction?
• Increase referral traffic to owned assets?
• Online discussions from offline activity?
and so on ..
8. • Unique audience being reached
• Audience available organically (fans /
followers)
What
How
• Social Platform Analytics
• Social Media Management Tools / APIs
• Web Analytics
What’s available to social marketers - Reach
9. • Clicks, Shares, Likes, Comments, Sentiment
• Post-Engagement Activity (i.e. page visitation)
• Engaged Users
What
How
• Social Platform Analytics
• Social Media Management Tools / APIs
• Social Listening Tools
What’s available to social marketers - Activity
10. • Brand metric uplift (recall, awareness, NPS)
• Shift in purchase intention
• Hard conversions / leads
What
How
• Primary Research
• Client-Side Tracking
• Social Listening Tools
What’s available to social marketers - Impact
12. Align
• Is this metric addressing our objectives?
• Are we set up to measure impact?
Making Social Metrics Useful – Ensure appropriateness
13. Benchmark
• Are we improving over time?
• How does this compare to the industry?
• What are platform-level benchmarks?
Making Social Metrics Useful - Context is key
14. Communicate
• How have other brands succeeded?
• How can we leverage unique platform data?
Making Social Metrics Useful – Leverage expertise
16. Native Advertising
Content Marketing continues to gain traction with
social marketers as a vehicle. How do brands measure
the impact of content at all stages of the sales funnel?
17. Programmatic
How will a shift to programmatic change the
performance of social advertising, and close the loop
on social measurement?
18. Define success – clearly understand your
objectives prior to execution1
2
3
Select and focus on metrics that align
with marketing objectives
Communicate with partners – leverage
platform expertise to refine measurement
Globally, social platforms are attracting the attention and dollars of brands and marketers .. social is taking an increasing percentage of digital budgets, and as a market, is growing billions of dollars every year – this makes sense, given that social is providing access to an engaged audience, that continues to grow in magnitude
Despite this investment of both time and money, marketers still struggle with measuring the impact of their marketing activities – their return on social investment.
Over time, we’ve seen a shift from fans and followers being the ultimate measure of success, to more sophisticated attribution modeling and branding impact – a product of social’s maturity as a marketing vehicle
One of the biggest challenges for new marketers however, is understanding how to measure success on social
Why? It’s partially down to not understanding exactly what’s at their disposal by way of metrics, not clearly defining what success looks like to them before making an investment or strategic decision, and selecting metrics that aren’t in alignment with business objectives
Bear in mind that social can also help measure the impact of offline activity and overall brand health – remember that social layers in to all of our marketing efforts, as this is where discussions are happening
So before we even look at metrics and measurement, success needs to be defined. This will directly influence what we look at when trying to understand our ‘return’ on investment
Is success an uplift in awareness? An increase in brand engagement? Are we chasing leads, or trying to improve satisfaction? Or are we trying to drive traffic to our website?
It seems simple and straightforward, but being clear on our objectives will help us intelligently navigate through the metrics at our disposal
The great news here is, once we’re clear on our objective – and know what to monitor by way of metrics – we’re setting ourselves up for success. We know where we stand, and can optimise against what’s working, based on our relevant success metrics.
So what’s available to social marketers currently by way of metrics?
Our first bucket of metrics are centered around reach – step through what / how
Secondly, we can track and understand engagement with our social advertising – step through what / how
Thirdly, we can monitor impact, the traditional lens we look through when seeking to understand ROI – step through what / how
So those are the metrics at our disposal, how do we make sense of them and ensure what we’re selecting is in fact useful for us?
Alignment is key.
In order for the metrics we select to be useful, we need to ensure they’re in alignment with what we’re trying to achieve from an objectives perspective – if we’re measuring awareness, let’s look at ensuring we reach the audience we care about. Let’s optimise towards what’s helping us best achieve that objective.
If we’re looking to change the perception of our consumers, do we have the tools we need to measure that – can we listen to sentiment on social, do we have the resources to run ad effectiveness research or do we need to partner externally?
Looking through a performance lens – it’s also important to understand how these metrics stack up on a relative perspective. Is our advertising in-line with what is typically seen on a social platform, or are we laggards? Are we improving, or are changes we’re making to content or creative not resonating with our audience?
It’s hard to know where there’s room to improve if we have no context, and are looking at metrics in a vacuum – context is key, and we need to be across it
The IAB is tasked to help make this process of benchmarking easier for marketers here in Singapore, through the standardization of social metrics, we’re aspiring to create a more comparable measurement environment
Lastly, leverage the partners you work with
Understanding how other brands have achieved what you’re trying to achieve on the platform can help in selecting impactful metrics (how have they measured success?), and sharing with partners your objectives can open conversations on what unique platform data can be leveraged to help you measure as a brand or agency – especially as social platforms begin to diverge in what’s available through self-serve means
So on a top-line level, that’s what’s at our disposal on social – but what’s around the corner?
With an increasing focus on native advertising, and content finding a home on social, marketers are looking for answers around how to best measure their content marketing strategies on these platforms – questions remain on how to measure the impact of content at all stages of the sales funnel, how does exposure to content influence the path to conversion?
And with programmatic entering the social space (such as with Facebook), questions remain on what kind of impact this will have on the performance of social advertising – given that behavioral targeting let’s us better synthesize disparate data sources to deliver relevant messages. Will programmatic help us tell a more insightful story on decision-making, and what do we need to be measuring to tell this story?