Few brands have a marketing plan that lacks the words "social media," but most are struggling with how to measure and communicate the impact of programs on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and other sites.
What's the value of a tweet by someone with 100,000 followers? Does your brand's 45,000 Facebook friends translate into anything meaningful? How many of the people watching a promotional YouTube video will actually purchase the product?
Many corporations are not fully capitalizing on social media simply because "digital evangelists" have not yet captured or communicated its value proposition in a way that senior leadership understands. There are ways, however, to ensure that social media programs support strategy, establish meaningful goals, and communicate success to those who care about social media -- and even those who fear and loathe it.
In my previous role as marketing director of Propecia (a medicine that treats hair loss), I didn't care much about how many balding men engaged with my brand online. All that mattered was that my "paid" or "earned" online messaging reached men motivated to treat hair loss, and that a meaningful percent of them started treating with Propecia as a result of our digital marketing.
In some cases, our "cost-per-qualified-patient start" via social media was lower than that of paid search. In other cases, I saw well-targeted advertising campaigns driving little measurable behavior, including even website visits. Advertising impressions don't count unless they actually make an impression.
Social media is older than the internet, but -- with the current hype around its role in the marketing mix -- it often remains an important tactic in search of a strategic objective.
Perhaps any company's most important prerequisite to measuring social-media marketing is to determine its goal: enhance public relations, or advertise and sell products. Social media tends to fit more nicely in a public relations function, but it can sometimes be tracked to revenue more easily than offline mediums (like print or television). At a minimum, a well-crafted social media pilot can drive such "sales proxies" as awareness, image, or purchase intent.
Unlocking the full value of social media requires a near impossible task for a large corporation: organizational alignment between public relations, legal, brand teams, advertising, and those agencies that serve and help measure campaigns. But it's perhaps more risky to await the "corporate kumbaya" before experimenting thoughtfully and with accountability.
The audience of a recent new media conference seemed to agree universally that CPM (cost per 1,000 ad impressions) is a decent way to buy online media. But that same measurement translates incredibly poorly to social media. Comparing an ad impression with a positive peer-to-peer endorsement of a company is, unfortunately, like comparing the impact of a blue envelope packed with discounts and offers to a handwritten letter from a friend. True, they both arrive via the mailbox, but that's about where their commonalities end.
Duration of engagement -- prominent panelists argued -- was a better way to measure social media. Inarguably, a person watching a three-minute video is more likely to take action than someone glancing at a banner for a fraction of a second (or not noticing it at all). Still, a stopwatch misses such valuable dimensions as relevancy, persuasive impact, and targeting.
How many celebrated 2007-2009 viral video commercials actually reached a brand's target audience and compelled them to behave differently?
Here are some tips that can help you "reality check" your social media pilots, or at least build a "strawman" business case. I've found it helps executives overcome risk aversion when they see social media as contributing something they care about -- ROI.
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