Steps to measure your social media returns

Identify your KPIs

Social media marketing efforts will go in vain if you are unsure about your objectives. Are you looking to drive traffic to your website or make a sale? Once you know where your social media efforts should be driven at, you can decide upon your key performance indicators or KPIs. If a sale is your goal, then you should measure your ROI on the cost per sale value. No matter your objective for investing in social media, make sure your team is on the same page as far as KPI is concerned.

Plan your social media efforts in tandem with business objectives

Most brands drive their social media campaigns to build brand awareness or make a sale or get customer signups. First, identify your business objectives that you want to push through social media and then plan campaigns accordingly. If you want to build your brand via social media, you can measure your performance in the form of brand mentions, followers or impressions.

Make use of Google analytics to track conversion

Google analytics is a powerful tool that can help you in tracking and monitoring your goals as per the behavior of your audience. Suppose you want people to sign up for your online course, you can actually monitor whether visitors are taking the action or quitting midway.

Give values to your KPIs

Now that you have decided your social media goals and set up a tracking system, it is time to assign values to your KPIs. How much would you actually earn if you did a paid advertising to get customer signups.

Analyze your competitors

What are your competitors doing in the social space? You can uncover a lot of ideas if you analyze their social media efforts. Is your competitor more active on Twitter than Facebook? Find out which channel is best working for them and create a noise on the right medium.

Source: Your guide to measure Social Media ROI

Reference: Five Steps to Measuring Your Social Media ROI

Image courtesy: greasemonkeysem.com

What impact has the frequent “flux” with organic search traffic (SEO traffic) had on your traffic? How do you keep your website immune to the vagaries of Google algorithm updates?

Plancess website is quoted often by several third-party vendors and affiliates due to the authentic and genuine information it provides. In fact, Plancess was the eLearning website listed by the top career portals on the day of JEE Main 2015 for providing answer keys, text/video solutions and paper analysis.

How important is mobile traffic to you now (and going forward)?
[VT]: Nearly 45% of our website traffic is via mobile and tablet devices- thats close to 10000 visitors on a daily basis! We expect mobile traffic to go further up as we recognize this global trend. So, we have made PlancessJEE.com mobile-compatible / responsive- easy to read and interact on any screen-size and interface.

To enhance the user experience to the fullest, not only have we optimized our website for mobile devices, we also look into the browser and technology being used. Based on a deep understanding of our users and their usage patterns including operating systems, screen resolutions and several other variables, we have identified the exact pain points of users when using our website. We use this understanding to prioritize fixes and enhancements that can help users get the most from the website.

Please describe in more detail how you analyse user behaviour.
[VT]: We do this with A/B testing or multi-variate testing (MVT) using various tools. We look at heat map analysis and in-page analytics to give a leading indicator of what changes would work best. We implement the “challenger-champion” approach. Any new development is first introduced as a challenger to a certain section of the audience- and if the value addition to business as well as user experience via the challenger is more than our champion, only then we make the necessary changes through out. This way, the bulk of our traffic is always having the best experience out there.

Looking ahead, what is your mobile strategy going forward?
[VT]: Going forward, we’re building more products with a mobile-first mindset such that the product itself is designed in a way that can be engaging for mobile users. This is in-line with the overall strategy at Plancess to keep useful content front and centre of our offering. We aim to provide
the best intellectual experience, rather than having a mobile app without top-notch content.

In this regard, we’re building a module based eLearning approach via an Android/iOS application, and an assessment platform to complement the user learning. Further, we’ve identified some really amazing indicators of tracking user behaviour on this mobile app – which is not only customized for the right technology, but will also serve as a personal dashboard. It will provide a completely unique experience for every individual using the app and help them derive genuine value out of the product. We’re going to launch these within the next few months.

What advice would you give to start-ups in relation to quickly scaling up traffic acquisition?
[VT]: Digital marketing is not as easy as it seems to be- and it is not because of the tools that it is based on, but because of whom the marketing is subjected to. At Plancess, we believe that our users are not only intelligent and motivated, but also extremely dynamic. They can judge right from wrong- and are increasingly connected. Best quality content and user experience are critical. A happy customer is worth a lot more in today’s world. I would suggest the following do’s and don’ts for marketers trying to scale up traffic acquisition.

Do
a. Build content – original and authentic information
b. Offer great user experience – customer-centric as opposed to product-centric
c. Provide pre-sales and post-sales service- small gestures go a long way
d. Look for and develop referral/social traffic

Don’t
a. Engage in Black-hat marketing – be it with SEO or making false-claims, etc.
b. Focus on short term gain at the cost of long-term relationship with users – they’ll know (as will Google!)
c. Lead with a sales-driven approach instead of user value addition (counsellor approach)

What are the major challenges you face currently in relation to your online marketing efforts?
[VT]: – Finding new channels that can perform as well as our existing channels
– Going on a commission per sale as against to commission per lead with our affiliate partners
– Reaching newer audiences/ geographies: bulk of our website traffic is from tier 1/tier 2 cities but we really need to penetrate the interiors of the country to become a household name for students preparing for JEE.
– Online merchandising – many of our users still don’t have access to online banking and hence depend on parents. Hence a lot of sales have to be closed offline (COD) as against completing the transaction online.

How do you see online marketing evolve in the next couple of years?
[VT]: With growing Internet penetration, online marketing will undoubtedly provide the vital interface for firms to their target customers. Also, the growth in mobile phone usage enables easier reach to users. From a user perspective, access to information will become much easier and convenient. Users will be more informed, mobile and self-aware.

From a marketing perspective, it is the time for customer centricity overshadowing product centricity. In the eLearning realm, with most academic resources being available online, education is going to become a hot space with companies fighting for large ‘traffic-share’ instead of just having a strong ‘market-share’.

Recognising this, we are betting on providing the best content rather than the best technology – because in the long run, the value that users derive from our product will be the key differentiator critical to our success.

In the first of a two-part article featuring edited excerpts from the interview, Vaibhav attributes their success to a strong content-driven strategy. He also feels that search marketing is still a need-to-have avenue, when compared with social or display advertising that seem to be more of ‘good-to-have’ avenues. Vaibhav also has a slightly contrarian view on the growth/ effectiveness of online display advertising.

What have been the most effective strategies you have employed to grow the traffic to your website? Why do you think they have been effective?
[Vaibhav Tamrakar]: Plancess has always been a content driven company- and we strongly believe in the notion that content is king! We believe we have the best quality content in our preparation material, carefully crafted by our team of in-house experts and Top 100 IITians, whom we call our “Gurus”.

As part of our content strategy, we launched JEE Mag- a blog generated in-house- that serves as a one-stop portal for all news related to JEE, preparation techniques, tips-n-hacks from our Gurus and any other query that a student might have. We continuously strive to put the best resources on our website that have helped thousands of students realize their dreams.

Our sustained efforts at translating students’ dreams to reality have also helped us achieve our own goals. Today, hundreds of thousands of JEE aspirants flock to our website. We hope to keep them engaged with the quality of our content and the latest information pertaining to engineering.

What’s your take on the relative effectiveness of search marketing (both organic and paid-for) when compared social media marketing, other display advertising and offline marketing?
[VT]: Social media marketing: I believe Social is a ‘good-to-have’ platform, from a customer engagement perspective, and to give a potential touch point in case the user has some product related query, or is looking for some information. From a brand recognition perspective, it makes sense to be present where our users spend a lot of their time so that the brand gives an impression that we’re there when you need us.

At the same time, it is not a mission critical platform– i.e. if the social media page is not very active, it doesn’t mean the brand is not doing well. It might well be doing wonders with the product, and yet not really be up-to-date on social.

Search, on the other hand, is a vital ‘need-to-have’ platform. The user is becoming increasingly Internet-savvy. They cannot be coerced to view only one brand- and more often than not, are comparing various offerings via the Internet. Being strategically present there as a brand becomes really important.

Display advertising: A few years ago, display advertising was a really good mechanism to bring to the user product-centric marketing by displaying the best product offering from a company. Users did not actively check out brands on the Internet- and mostly used it as an information portal.

However, as the Internet has blended in with users’ lives, coupled with screen size getting smaller and smaller (read mobile/wearable devices), display advertising is losing its charm. Moreover, as the websites are themselves trying to provide the best UX to users, a lot of advertising gets unnoticed (‘banner blindness’).

On the other hand, search is not just ‘static SEO’ anymore due to personalisation of search results and a host of other factors. As a result, the ads/search experience is heavily customised to what the user wants. Consequently, these targeted search ads tend to yield much better conversion rates compared to display advertising.

Offline marketing: With increased Internet penetration and the proliferation of portable Internet devices- users tend to be always online. The amount of attention to billboards, banners/posters (outdoor advertising) gets has been reduced to minimal.

In fact, the millennials and the generation Z have pretty much taken over from the baby boomers and generation X. This generation likes the flavour of open space, free information and being connected to each other. Hence static marketing like print media/ TV commercials largely go unnoticed when compared to referral, social and online behaviour. Only brands that have a universal appeal – catering to a very diverse range of markets – across cultures, language, ages barrier – look towards these channels owing to their non-targeted approach. And of course, it is quite difficult to monitor ROI from these channels.

- See part 2: Customer-centric marketing, great user experience are key

See more news, views and tips on Search Engine Marketing, Display Advertising and Social Media Marketing, with an Indian context.

Intuitively, the decision makes a lot of sense as few people (anecdotally) seem to go to Facebook and perform searches expecting to see anything other than people’s profiles or company pages. However, considering the enormous captive user base of Facebook, a powerful web search capability might seem to offer its own opportunities.

While Facebook has maintained that it will continue its partnership with Microsoft in various other areas, we suspect the removal of Bing search from Facebook will be a greater loss for Bing than it is for Facebook.

There has been some recent ‘flux’ in the search space and realignment of existing relationships after Mozilla had announced in November that it had entered into a 5-year relationship with Yahoo to be the default search  engine on the Firefox browser (default search engines in Russia and China will be Yandex and Baidu, respectively).

The new Atlas solution will use “people-based marketing”, moving away from the use of cookies which is the prevalent method to serve and measure advertising. “Cookies don’t work on mobile, are becoming less accurate in demographic targeting and can’t easily or accurately measure the customer purchase funnel across browsers and devices or into the offline world. People-based marketing solves these problems,” writes Erik Johnson, Head of Atlas, on the Atlas blog.

Atlas Solutions is a Facebook company, after the latter acquired it from Microsoft for a reported $100 million in 2013. Not only will Atlas use data from Facebook to help advertisers with their targeting, but the data available to Facebook from different users of the Atlas platform is likely to be used by the social network to develop or customise its offerings.

The question is whether Atlas can become a viable competitor to Google’s DoubleClick solution.

- The NetMarketer Editorial Bureau

“This is an early step in our building functionality into Twitter to make shopping from mobile devices convenient and easy, hopefully even fun. Users will get access to offers and merchandise they can’t get anywhere else and can act on them right in the Twitter apps for Android and iOS; sellers will gain a new way to turn the direct relationship they build with their followers into sales,” writes Jain in the aforementioned blog post.

Users who ‘tap’ the buy button will then be shown additional details of the product and expected to enter the payment and shipping information to complete the purchase.

Twitter has also updated its privacy and security policies to accommodate the requirements of offering such functionality.

Offering transactional services such as online buying within the platform is a logical extension to Twitter’s business, from its predominantly-advertising based revenue model that it currently has. If this test turns out to be successful enough for Twitter to roll out the feature more widely, both in terms of geography as well as additional merchant partners, we could see online retailers worldwide taking a lot more to Twitter not only for online marketing but also driving sales.

-NetMarketer Editorial Team

In a nutshell, there are two main changes that Facebook has made to its news feed algorithm:
a) Clamp down on click-bait headlines

b) Prioritize links in the “link format” in the news feed and show fewer links shared in captions or status updates.

What are the implications of these changes for social media marketers?
Facebook marketers will need to be extra cautious with their post headlines. The headline should be clear, concise and give a fair indication of what the destination page would be like. Facebook claims that one of the ways in which it will be tracking click-bait is user behaviour. For example, if users bounce back to Facebook after clicking through to an external link, it could indicate that the destination page wasn’t very relevant to the user. So, the time spent on the destination page is a factor.

Secondly, marketers should consider how they add links to their posts. Facebook recommends the usage of links in the “Link format” because these get a significantly higher number of clicks than links posted as part of captions or status updates.

Lastly, monitor how the recent changes are likely to impact the reach and engagement of organic posts. Earlier this year- about February or so– the changes introduced by Facebook to their news feed led to a drastic drop in organic reach of posts. Many social media marketers who relied more on organic reach suddenly found their reach curtailed by over 50%. At the same time, it also meant that sponsored posts and ads on Facebook began to yield a much better click-through rate and (surprisingly, to some extent) conversions.

Whether the latest round of changes will further hurt the results from organic posts while positively impacting results from the paid-for options will need to be watched closely.

For the announcement related to the change in the News Feed, click here.

- The NetMarketer Editorial Bureau

Your take on a multi-channel online marketing strategy: what works and what doesn’t?
[Preeti Nirwal]: For online marketing to be successful for you, it’s important to spend time and figure out which mediums and channels are the most effective for your business. Each medium has it’s unique characteristics and reach, and they work differently for different markets/target audiences. It is probably a cliché, but it is an important one- you can’t take a one-size-fits-all approach to digital marketing. Test each channel to see which is right for your business.

How do you go about deciding on online marketing channel over another?
[PN]: A good place to start is to see where your competitors spend their efforts. Most businesses will implement a variety of mediums in order to reach the maximum amount of consumers. This diversification also helps in building brand equity. You should spend time understanding your target audience, who you are trying to sell to, and how they make purchasing decisions. Ultimately it’s all about connecting with your target audience.

What is a common mistake that marketers make?
[PN]: It’s extremely crucial to really understand the product/service you are marketing. I have seen a number of marketing teams that just don’t understand what they are marketing. When such a disconnect occurs, sales will surely suffer.

Could you share some key lessons learnt regarding the various marketing channels you have used?
[PN]:Sure. With pay-per-click search advertising, it is imperative to test keywords, multiple ad creative and landing pages to determine the highest conversion rate. Keyword selection is particularly important as too broad or generic keywords could result in an unprofitable drain on advertising budget. Similarly, check the effectiveness of the ad copy and whether the message is consistent with what is offered on the landing page. A creative may result in a high click through rate, but if the message is not in sync with the landing page, the clicks become unproductive.

E-mail messages are great for promoting / up selling products and services to an existing customer or opt-in prospect base. Ensure that you provide something of value, such as new features or how-to tips to this audience, each time you communicate. Keep the messages simple and have a clear call to action. Avoid multiple calls to action as people tend to get confused and often end up taking no action.

Social media is about what’s happening right now and is the closest you can get to your audience. I say close because you instantly create a mutual ‘public link’ between you and the audience. Be sincere and genuine; if your posts are inaccurate or ignorant you will be called out.

What is your recipe for getting the marketing message across to the audience?
[PN]: Pay very close attention to messaging- a lot of attention. Each word that you use to describe your product/service should be carefully selected. Remember that your target audience will have a short attention span, so you want to use relevant, concise language that will capture their attention. Keep your message clean and simple.

How do you gauge the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and different channels?
[PN]: Have clear end-goals and metrics for each medium you use. Metrics need to be set in order to measure the success of your online marketing campaigns. For example, in some campaigns the goal could be the number of impressions that your message gets, while for several others it may be critical to monitor and track conversion rates. Either way, continuously analyse results and optimize campaigns as needed.

What’s your advice to aspiring and up-and-coming digital marketers?
[PN]: Keep up to date with the latest trends and shifts in online marketing tactics. New channels grow in popularity fairly quickly, so be in tune with the trends to stay ahead of your competition. Explore, experiment, evaluate and execute new options. Ultimately, online marketing is about building trust, understanding your consumer and their preferences, and connecting with them.

Small businesses that had gotten used to the company pages as an inexpensive means to reach out, engage and interact with their target audience are particularly aggrieved. To get a sense of the frustration, check out this interesting message to Facebook from one such affected marketer- a food delivery company (Eat24)- who announced an “emotional breakup” with the social media giant. Marketers using Facebook for their social media marketing are now confronted with some fundamental questions. Has all their past effort come to waste? Are they condemned to getting disengaged users and poor reach if they do not embrace any paid-for marketing on Facebook? What can they do- if at all- to continue to get some traction from their organic marketing efforts or should that effort be allocated elsewhere?

What the numbers say about Facebook’s declining organic reach

The drop in organic reach has been a subject of some concern since late 2012, though it is only in the recent past that it has assumed alarming proportions. This trend is akin to what organic search engine marketers (SEO professionals) are apparently experiencing—drop in organic search traffic and ever-more uncertainty about the potential traffic from this channel. A research conducted by Social@Ogilvy- one of the foremost digital consultancy organisations in the world- with an analysis of 106 country-level brand pages it has administrator access to found that the average reach of organic posts had almost halved from 12.05% in October 2013 to 6.15% in February 2014.

Image source: http://blog.bufferapp.com/

Since February 2014, we suspect that there has been a further drop in organic reach going both by the campaigns we track and various reports in the media. It is obvious that increasingly Facebook is cueing all business pages to be prepared for the day when their organic reach will be zilch. Marketers are hit by a double-strike from Facebook: the steep fall in post reach on the one-hand and growing competition for limited space for organic posts on the other. The writing on the wall (no pun intended) for Facebook marketers seems clear: shell out the moolah to get a slice of precious real estate on your target audience’s FB page or risk being unseen.

Facebook’s take

Not unsurprisingly- considering that it is a publicly-listed commercial organization dependent on advertising revenues- Facebook is focused on making

paid advertising/ promotions more effective and getting more marketers to use those options rather than relying on the ‘free-distribution’ channel. Their advice to marketers is to focus on the ultimate business results rather than trying to acquire fans, which is often the objective with most company fan pages.

“Advertisers should think of fans as a means to an end, not as the end in themselves. The end should be business results,” said Facebook spokesman, Brandon McCormick.

Are the paid advertising solutions effective?

What we can vouch for unequivocally is that advertising on FB has been made much simpler in the last couple of years to get more businesses to take out their credit cards.

However, the jury is still out on whether using Facebook advertising is effective in terms of driving business results (just what the FB spokesman wanted advertisers to focus on!). We’ve heard comments from cynics who call it ‘Farcebook for business’, while some others say that the precise targeting options offered by Facebook works for them.

Undoubtedly, Facebook advertising appears much more affordable than print and other forms of traditional marketing. What is less clear is the success that businesses enjoy from such advertising, gauging which remains a not-so-simple exercise. While e-commerce websites are striving to sell more of their products using FB’s advertising solutions, many of them have to be content with ‘exposure’ and brand awareness; conversions still seem to be a distant attainment.

Deciphering the Facebook organic feed algorithm: what marketers need to do

Even as marketers may be swimming against the tide, it makes sense to try and extract as much juice as possible from organic reach. To do so, they will need to think carefully, critically analyze the content they are creating and sharing and re-set their content strategy.

An infographic by PostRocket attempts to unlock the Facebook algorithm, which may give some essential pointers for marketers to formulate their content creation and distribution strategy on FB.

As a smart marketer, you should be well aware that the solution to the declining reach is not a click or two away. It will take a sustained effort to get any degree of success in expanding organic reach.

The “simple” mantra: focus on making posts relevant, useful and engaging

There is no magic bullet to address the problem of declining organic reach. As the above infographic shows, organic reach will be a function of a virtuous cycle: the more interactions that a particular piece of content gets from those it already reaches, greater is the likelihood of the content being shown to more people (aka, increase in organic reach).

The simple mantra for boosting organic reach of FB posts? Make your posts more relevant. Find out what posts engaged more fans. If you keep the content most relevant to your line of business, you have won half the battle.

Besides, time your posts right. Just as a scrumptious plate of hot lunch coming out of the kitchen would attract more interest at around 12 p.m. than at 4 p.m, interest and interaction from the audience to your content will vary with time. Determine the appropriateness of content for different time slots and you will get more interest that leads to more ‘likes’, comments and shares.

Lastly, request your fans to opt for your posts by adding your page through the setting tab. An example is shown below. However, ensure to put good-quality and relevant posts unless you want your fans to opt-out of following your page.

Here is another useful infographic [http://bit.ly/RuxKpl] that sums up the organic ways to thrive on Facebook, How are you dealing with overcoming the problem of organic reach? Got any other useful tips to share with the social media marketing community? Drop in your comments below!

- By Namita Ahuluwalia, content manager at On Target Marketing Solutions with inputs from Kathleen Murze; edited by Manoj Aravindakshan
 

This is based on several websites and Facebook campaigns that we have studied closely. Even when the number of ‘Likes’ increased manifold (over 300%) in a span of 2-3 months and the engagement levels in terms of Shares and Comments to each post also recorded similar jump, we did not see any significant improvement in organic search engine referrals. There was an obvious lack of correlation between the two. Yes, referrals from Facebook to the websites we looked did increase over a period of time, but these referrals continued to be a significantly smaller percentage of overall traffic to the websites.

What we see is consistent with Google’s statement that at this time the search engine aren’t using any social signals from Facebook or Twitter as relevancy factors for their organic search results. In fact, in the video below, Matt Cutts of Google implies that Facebook and Twitter signals are certainly not being used as influencers for ranking on Google.

However, this is not to say that such social presence may not be considered as ranking factors in future. It is likely that as Google develops better algorithms that are even less reliant on links as a relevancy factor, social signals will be important.