Editorial Articles

In the early days of social media it took a certain leap of faith for a brand to invest in a social media campaign. This brave new world was pioneered by brands who were happy to take a risk, relying on trial and error, creativity and a healthy dose of luck. Measurement metrics were nowhere to be seen.

But as the market matures, brands are asking whether a social media campaign demonstrates a return on investment.

Of course, it can. Common sense dictates that a positive reputation leads to healthy sales. The same is true of social media: our evidence shows that brands who increase their social media reputation see a considerate lift in sales. For example: a social media campaign last year for Irish crisp brand, Mr Tayto, saw the autobiography of the brand’s iconic figurehead topping the bestseller list.

The beauty of social media is its transparency. It is possible to track a brand’s reputation online through a combination of automated tools and human analysis and so track the reputational impact of a marketing campaign, product launch or the market entry of a new competitor. This gives brands a real insight into how their campaigns are working, how they’re doing against their competitors, and where the opportunities are to improve sales or address customer issues.

The same rules apply to social media as to any other marketing campaign. Start with a clear objective: what do you want to achieve? No-one would advocate spending money on an ad campaign without any idea of what you want viewers to do at the end of it. The same considerations – and the same measurement metrics – should be applied to social media.

If your marketing campaigns are measured by reach, then similar (CPM) metrics can be attributed to social media spend. If you measure by sales impact, then the tools need to be in place to measure the impact of your social media campaign. There are some well-documented examples of brands selling direct to consumers via social media channels: Dell’s main Twitter account now has more than 1.5 million followers, and last year Dell attributed $6.5 million of orders to promotions run on Twitter. Most brands will know how much it costs to create a direct sale (via telesales activity for example); this gives a benchmark for measuring the effectiveness of other direct sales channels.

But it’s not just sales or reach that can be measured. An increasing number of brands are taking the brave (but smart) step of creating a community to manage customer services, as eircom has done recently with its ‘eircom connect’ site. In this case, social media is a customer service tool, and can be measured in the same way as your contact centre, or web help tools. The result may be that the cost of the contact centre is reduced, as customers interact with each other to help solve common problems or issues, taking some of the strain off helpline services, for example.

Where social media shows most value, though, is when it is connected to other marketing activities. Online promotions, for example, can drive offline sales, for companies of all sizes: the Albion Bakery in London uses Twitter to broadcast when a fresh batch of bread or cakes are ready – driving footfall to the store. Visits and even coupon redemptions generated via social media channels - such as Twitter lists, Facebook user walls, blogs and seeded content - can be tracked, so a clear metric can be assigned against a specific promotion.

Media has never been so transparent, nor so measurable.

Steve Richards
MD, Yomego
Twitter: yomegosocial