Social media marketing: how to determine your activities’ effectiveness

According to Altimeter’s research, only 34% of the businesses acknowledge the social media’s power when it comes to their results. It isn’t easy to prove how strong the impact of digital activities is and, more often than not, that actually represents the main barrier when trying to sell a social media marketing strategy.
If anything, it is a paradoxical situation as traditional marketing (such as television, radio, magazines) doesn’t provide us with complete results concerning the campaign’s progress. Conversely, social networks provide us with a huge quantity of data that can be analyzed during the course of the campaign.

At this point, it’s natural to wonder where the problem is and why so many people have a feeling of mistrust. The main issue surely resides in the ability to read the data and to transmit them properly to the client,making sure they learn how to read them in turn. What is the social media ROI?

When it comes to social media, the ROI must be considered in relation to the brand’s goal. The goals of a social media marketing strategy can be many: -brand awareness (ex.: business b2b)

-engagement (which is important for ONLUS, and associations)

-conversions in terms of purchase, finding new contacts for your brand’s e-Commerce, facilitating the application for appointments

-customer care (which is a very important goal for credit institutions)



Once the brand’s goal and a valid strategy have been put into perspective, while monitoring the campaign it’s important to understand which KPI (key performance indicators) must be observed to determine how effective the activity is, keeping an eye on the costs.

More specifically:
- your brand awareness goal: you must monitor the coverage (the individuals the you reach) and the interactions obtained (reactions and comments), but most importantly their quality

-your engagement goal: you must consider both the quantity and the quality of the interactions. Does your fanbase express affection? Do they feel involved by the content that you post to such an extent that they spontaneously share it and make it viral? Yes? Mission accomplished.

-conversions in terms of purchase: the accomplishment of this goal is certainly easier to monitor and determine because, aside from Facebook tracking pixel and the number of clicks obtained by the campaign, you can also rely on Google Analytics’ data. All of these factors may be confirmed or disproved by the sales, but they undoubtedly generate a positive traffic - in target - towards the e-Shop and, even though the purchase isn’t concluded, it’s important to consider the several factors who don’t depend on the social campaign. For example, it’s essential to determine whether the procedure towards the purchase is fast and intuitive for the customer.

-your customer care goal: whenever a customer brings up an issue, how quickly and peacefully is it fixed? Is the customer service so real and humane that the “crisis” becomes a triumph for the brand? Yes? Mission accomplished.