What Does a Social Media Marketing "Win" Mean to You?

Social media marketing can, at times, be tricky to determine effectiveness or a true ROI (return on investment), especially when dealing with organic content.

How do you know for sure how many people are coming to your company from your social media?

How many referrals are you getting because of others seeing your social media posts?

How many people have been thinking about you or your service for some time because they see your social media, but then they bump into you at an event, or look you up on Google before contacting you?

My point is that there are so many benefits that come from social media marketing that are extremely difficult to track...

But that's not what we're discussing in this article.

Determining a "Win".

What is a "Win" for your social media marketing has more to do with having clear, tangible, and traceable goals and objectives for what you're wanting or expecting from your company's social media marketing. If you don't have clearly defined objectives or ways to tell if it's working, it can often feel like you're just spinning circles or wasting your time on something that is not effective for your company.  

I will cover The 3 top social media marketing objectives and which tangibles to track to determine the effectiveness of your social media marketing strategy. I won't be going over the how's or why's behind these marketing objectives in this article, but feel free to check out our other articles HERE for additional information.

1. Brand awareness-

This is a great primary objective for someone who is starting a new company, new product launch, or looking to expand and simply wanting to get the word out. This is generally one of the more simple and easier ways to track objectives.  Brand awareness is simply getting a lot of people to see who you are and what you do. The primary objective here is not conversion to sales, it is simply to get known by people.  When determining if your social media marketing is accomplishing this, the primary metrics you want to track are impressions and reach.  

        - Impressions are how many total times your social media posts and ads were seen which often the same people may see your post multiple times.

        - Reach is how many individual people saw your social media posts and ads.

2. Brand loyalty-

This is where people choose to continue using your company as well as become advocates for your company.  Simply put, this is how many people have liked and followed your page.  The more followers you have, the more likely people will see, like, share, comment, which in the long run means higher probability for referrals, purchases, repeat business, etc. The primary social media analytics to track for this are page likes, followers, and engagement.

         -  Page likes and followers gives you a baseline of how many people will potentially see your posts so long as you are posting content that is relevant to them.  
           Generally speaking, 10% of your followers will see any given social media post that you create (to see if they take interest in it or not) before it will be shown
           to additional followers or friends of followers.

         - Engagement is a combination of people clicking, liking, commenting, sharing, reacting, or simply hovering over your post.  The more engagement you
           have the more likely it is that your post will be seen by more people.

3. Sales or conversions-

I left the best for last for a reason. See, everyone wants sales or more business, but sometimes forget that there are other steps you have to take first to accomplish this. Our society has become so obsessed with instant results or gratification that we often forget that, generally speaking, success doesn't happen overnight.  Are sales the primary end result for virtually every business? YES. But every business has to know their individual sales cycle to understand the best way to get there.

That said, there are a few extremely handy tools available for generating and tracking sales for business on social media.

          - Lead generation forms are one tool available through most social media platforms' ad systems. These ad campaigns are able to target your ideal
           demographics and if they are interested in your service, they can fill out a standard or custom lead form for you to follow up on.

          - You can also install tracking info on your company's website such as Facebook Pixel or LinkedIn insight tag to track their actions on your page and use re-
            targeting ads to convert those who ended up not purchasing on the first trip to your site.

While this article only touches the surface of some of the what, how's and why's with social media marketing, the major point here is this...

HAVE A CLEAR OBJECTIVE UPFRONT FOR YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING!

Take the time to clearly define more than just "I want more sales" and build at least a basic road map to determine the effectiveness of your company's social media marketing strategy.

If this is something you're unsure of or need help with any part of it, Manski Media is here to help!