According to a study by McKinsey in 2014, to improve their social media visibility and impact, many chief executive officers and CIOs are getting more hands-on with their digital hustle.
Investing in anything is risky because you can never be sure whether you will get anything in return. That is why you cannot blame big bosses snooping around wondering where their money goes.
It had become a priority for the executives to execute their digital campaigns properly to generate a following and increase their viewers and potential customers. But still, with their eagerness for their business to thrive digitally in the chaotic world of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., many still face difficulties in adapting to the new media. Visibility is one key but the response from your following is another. Sure, the likes, comments, and reactions affect your social media presence, but what is the worth of trending if it is not money making? Here are a few things to keep in mind to know how much your digital marketing initiatives are worth:
Likes To Cash: Know Your Goals
First, you must know the goals of the social media campaign. These goals must be achievable and doable, and not too ambitious.
Most businesses use their social media accounts to reach out to their customers for feedback, suggestions, and to build visibility. Businesses also use their social media to create demands and develop trends that can be translated into sales.
Standards and Measurements
Another thing to remember in having a social media marketing strategy is to know how to measure the development of your campaign. When you already have a set of goals for your campaign, standards should be aligned.
For you to see if your standards are being achieved properly, you must create a set conventional unit to measure it to see improvements quantitatively. Each objective you set will be measured differently.
For instance, to build visibility, one must be mindful of the increase in its social media following and the number of the members of its community. Also, one should know if the business is generating a buzz and if the business is making a trend. The perception of your brand, if it is trending, should be aligned with your business goals and the buzz generated can help measure if the pertinent discussions are about your brand or against your competition.
Measuring the creation of demand is also relevant. To measure this you should track the amount you spend per target user. Creating a demand is one of the vital roles of social media, though it is not that cheap. Some even use certain applications just to observe the behavior of the consumers, but also those applications might not be that cost-efficient. To know how much money is being spent per consumer, divide the money spent on the campaign by the number of consumers brought on by the campaign. If a lot of customers were generated by the campaign and the campaign was spent on much, it may not be deemed as profitable.
Customer Support
Using your social media account as customer support is one efficient and effective way of reaching out to your customers. It is very crucial that you treat clients with the utmost respect, putting in mind that they are asking for your help. Being in touch with your customers is a sign for them that you are active and willing to answer questions. Every comment, feedback, and the reaction is just a click away from customers and also a quick way for you to respond.
Also, the response you make in comments on Facebook and threads in Twitter can also be searched and revisited many times. Facebook even acknowledges if your business page responds actively in every message sent by customers. This can set the image if your business is deemed approachable by the customers.
To measure the efficiency of customer support, it may be through the money spent and the money saved. Measuring the contact speed is also relevant to attain your standards. For comparison, customers may tend to seek customer support in social media instead of calling customer representatives, since the response is faster and some even rely on other published FAQs, or frequently asked questions, which also improves digital visibility. Having FAQs on a page gives accessibility and saves time for both the brand and the customer, that is why FAQs are should ideally be available.
Reviews and suggestions are also present in your business page which can be boon or bane depending on the performance of your social media managers and assistants. Replying with patience and in detail will give the consumers the answers they need. Provide informative, clear instructions to avoid future problems. From these comments, brands can learn from the consumer’s ways to improve services and products. To measure this, observe how many suggestions were given by users and also the number of individual users who suggested.
Data Analysis
It is also important to track the things the brand posts on social media. There are many Twitter Analytics tools available for everyone that can be used to analyze data. Analytics should be carefully interpreted in order to gauge the effectiveness of ads. This is important to avoid further wasting of money on ineffective campaigns, which can be poured onto other campaigns that can be developed.
Creating tags can also help you track how users, clients, and other people use your keywords, and how frequent they use the tag. In line with this, you can see how users use your brand or product in conversations. The behavior of your customers will be evident in analyzing the data. This will be helpful in knowing what aspect to improve.
Another important thing to think about is if the content of your ads and marketing strategy is doing its job. Does it engage your customers or potential clients? Are consumers persuaded by the campaign? Does it make your customers want to buy your product or share with other people your brand?
It is important to weigh which campaigns are more effective. You can measure the effectiveness of a campaign, singling every ad you have until you can know which one is the most effective. This process can help you quantify factors which might make your ads effective or not. You can analyze the time it took for you to create the campaign versus the investment. Other managers use the A or B method, in which they will compare two campaigns and rule out the pros and cons. You can also check which one gets more shares, comments or likes.
