Focusing on the Post-Launch Phase

In our earlier blog, Thismoment discussed the importance of the pre-launch phase of social campaign creation. Once the planning, creation and launching stages are done with, marketers are left with the final and crucial stage of measuring the outcome of their efforts. Besides providing marketers with an overview of their brand health, measuring the effectiveness of social campaigns helps understand:

• The factors that have contributed to success
• The chinks in the social media marketing armor and how these can be fixed

However, eMarketer’s research shows:

• 47% marketers believed they were ‘somewhat effective’ at measuring the effectiveness of social campaigns.
• 28% believed they were ‘not very effective‘, while 12% said ‘not at all effective‘.

While these stats are worrying, the recent increase in use of both paid and free social monitoring tools means brands are concerned about knowing the outcome of their marketing initiatives. But before proceeding further, marketers need to ask themselves what they wish to achieve from the campaign. Do they wish to generate awareness? Increase revenues/sales? Improve engagement etc.

Metrics for Measurement

Marketers look at certain basic metrics to measure the success of the social campaigns. Metrics allow brands to evaluate their efforts by providing them with solid, measurable data. Here are some key metrics for measurement:

• User Submissions: There isn’t a better way to measure the success of UGC campaigns than by tracking the number of user-submissions. The number of user submissions: a) directly impact user-engagement and b) affect brand visibility and reach.
  

  To promote their Fancy Feast Mornings Gourmet Cat Food, Purina launched the “Morning Moments” UGC campaign using Thismoment’s DEC platform. The campaign’s success was measured by number of user-submissions, which subsequently translated into increased user-engagement and product visibility. Check out the Fancy Feast DEC to view the user-submissions that were added to Thismoment’s unique mosaic theater.

• Sentiment Analysis & Share-of-Voice: These are highly valuable and mostly accurate indicators of how well your campaign is performing. Finding out the share-of-voice indicates the buzz surrounding a campaign/brand. However, this alone is does not specify how well a campaign was received. The next step involves knowing how many of those conversations were positive or negative in tonality by analyzing the sentiment.

  Thismoment’s social media monitoring and measurement capabilities, for instance, can be used to analyze sentiment and know share-of-voice.

• 

  Don’t Forget those Retweets/Likes/Followers/Shares: Although the number of retweets, Likes etc. doesn’t always indicate the success of campaigns, it would be unwise to dismiss them as unimportant. According to the 2011 Chief Marketer survey, 60% of marketers rated fans and followers, followed by retweets and shares (39%), as the top metrics for measuring social marketing success.

  These are crucial indicators of engagement and show that consumers are interested in your brand/products. An increase in Likes/Shares etc. denotes improved engagement, which means your campaign is successful.

• Comments & Reviews: Comments, feedback and reviews are not just indicators of engagement, but can also affect returns. Positive feedback/comments/reviews mean:
  • Your campaign is doing great and is likely to influence consumers’ buying decisions
  • Consumers find your social content/campaigns interesting enough to respond to
  

  An increase in negative comments, however, means your social marketing strategy needs a fix.

  Check out the social conversation module on Maybelline Canada’s Facebook app (built on Thismoment’s DEC) that showcases consumers’ involvement and engagement with the brand.

• Leads & Sales: Although concerned about the Likes, comments etc., marketers also want their sales charts to be healthy. Leads and sales are measurable, quantifiable indicators of a brands’ social success. Marketers can start by tracking requests for contact information, product demos etc. For brands, the journey starts with tracking these leads, converting them into customers and finally measuring the overall increase in sales.

Conclusion

Social media is a dynamic, unfettered space. This makes it challenging for brands to know the outcome of their marketing efforts. While leads and sales are quantifiable indicators of a campaign’s success, marketers are also depending on other metrics to understand their brand’s health and determine if their marketing strategy needs to be tweaked. Brands today also measure the effectiveness of campaigns based on engagement levels. By tracking user-submissions, monitoring sentiment and volumes, measuring the number of Likes, comments etc., marketers can know just how engaged their customers are and how successful their social campaigns have been.

- Shama Ahmed
Thismoment

Andrew Sielen

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