In today’s data-driven marketing landscape, simply having a social media presence isn’t enough. To truly succeed, you need to understand how your efforts are performing and what impact they’re having on your business goals. We say data is important all the time, but if you want to learn more, check out our article here to learn more about the importance of data and social media analytics.
How do you track online to offline sales?
What metrics should you be including in your SMART goals?
This is where measuring social media success comes in.
Why Measuring Success Matters
Social media offers a goldmine of data on audience behaviour and campaign effectiveness. It also provides a captive audience that, if you’ve taken the time to create a community, are readily waiting by their phones for your limited-time offers or behind-the-scenes posts. By tracking the right metrics, you can:
- Optimize your social media strategy: Identify what content resonates with your audience and adjust your approach accordingly.
- Demonstrate ROI (Return on Investment): Quantify the impact of your social media efforts on key business metrics like website traffic, leads generated, and sales conversions. This one gets a little tricky and/or expensive if you’re a B2B company. And, if you don’t have ways of tracking things offline, it becomes impossible for B2C companies as well.
- Benchmark against competitors: See how your social media performance stacks up against your industry peers, and identify areas for improvement. There are now multiple tools, including a free one from Meta Business Suite that help you track your success against your competitors. The Meta one is simply called Benchmarking and can be found in Meta Business Suite.
Key Metrics to Track
While vanity metrics like follower count can be tempting to focus on, they don’t tell the whole story. They are valuable in the long-term, but in the short-term, a Follower doesn’t necessarily equal a sale. Here are some crucial metrics to track in 2024:
- Engagement Rate: This measures how well your content resonates with your audience. It’s calculated by dividing the total number of engagements (likes, comments, shares) by your follower count and multiplying by 100. A high engagement rate indicates that your content is sparking conversations and interest.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): This metric measures the percentage of people who see your social media post and click on a link included within it. A high CTR suggests your content is effective at driving traffic to your website or landing page. Sprout Social https://sproutsocial.com/features/social-media-analytics/ reports that the average click-through rate across all industries on social media ads is 0.92%. Keept this in mind when you’re getting down on yourself, thinking you’re not doing well enough. While this metric showcases a very general percentage, it’s a nice benchmark to start with. We like to try and get clients regularly into the 3-5% range here in New Brunswick.
- Reach and Impressions: Reach refers to the number of individual users who saw your content, while impressions represent the total number of times your content was displayed. Tracking these metrics helps you understand how many people you’re reaching with your social media efforts.
- Follower Growth: While not the sole indicator of success, monitoring follower growth over time can provide valuable insights into your brand awareness and audience acquisition efforts. Followers are great but do your best to turn them into Engaged Followers.
- Lead Generation: Track how many leads you generate through social media, such as through sign-up forms or social media lead magnets. This helps you measure the effectiveness of your social media campaigns in attracting potential customers. This is becoming easier as well as platforms such as Meta Ads and Business Suite can help you track your messages and ultimately who converted to a lead from them.
- Website Traffic and Conversions: Use website analytics tools to track how much traffic your social media efforts are driving to your website, and how many of those visitors convert into leads or sales. This provides a clear picture of the impact of social media on your bottom line.
Beyond the Numbers: Social Listening Matters Too
While quantitative data is crucial, don’t underestimate the power of social listening. This involves actively monitoring online conversations to understand what people are saying about your brand, your industry, and your competitors. By using social listening tools, you can:
- Identify brand sentiment: See how people perceive your brand and address any negative feedback promptly. There are many tools, including free ones, that can help speed up the process. Try starting with a Google Alert for your company. It’s free.
- Discover emerging trends: Stay ahead of the curve by identifying trending topics and conversations relevant to your industry. This is where having an agency on hand helps. They already know the trends. They know the general trends across the country, but also have the experience to know which trends will succeed in their local area.
- Engage with your audience: Respond to comments and questions in a timely manner to build stronger relationships with your followers. Respond to all comments, even negative ones and ones that are just GIFs.
The Right Tools for the Job: Social Media Analytics Platforms
Fortunately, you don’t have to track all this data manually. Several social media analytics platforms can help you gather, analyze, and visualize your social media performance. Here are a few popular options:
By investing in a social media analytics platform, you can gain valuable insights and make data-driven decisions to optimize your social media presence and achieve your marketing goals.
A caveat for 2024 on these third-party monitoring tools. It seems as though every quarter we were getting more notifications that functionality was leaving the platform we used (Zoho) and moving to on-platform. This meant that certain datasets were no longer going to be shown in our analytics, but they would be on the analytics directly within X. This is why we got rid of Zoho.
It may save time creating reports, but we’ve seen massive discrepancies and data losses between these platforms over the years. That’s why we go post by post, every single month through the individual data and then use tools and our 40 years in business to extrapolate valuable business insights.
But What About Tracking Online to Offline?
Social media’s impact extends beyond the digital realm. It often plays a crucial role in influencing offline purchases. However, accurately measuring how social media contributes to in-store sales or phone inquiries can be tricky. Here are some modern tactics to bridge the gap and track online to offline sales:
- Unique Coupon Codes: Develop unique coupon codes specific to each social media platform or campaign. This allows you to track how many customers used the code at checkout in your physical store, directly linking the sale to your social media efforts.
- QR Codes: Utilize QR codes on social media posts or in-store signage. Customers can scan the code with their smartphones to access a special offer, view product information, or be directed to a landing page. By tracking QR code scans, you can gain insights into how many people interacted with your social media content and potentially made an offline purchase.
- Vanity Phone Numbers: Assign a unique phone number specifically for your social media campaigns. This allows you to track the number of calls generated through social media and potentially connect them to in-store sales.
- UTM Parameters: UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameters are codes added to URLs that track specific traffic sources. Use UTM parameters to track clicks from social media posts to your website, and then analyze website data (using tools like Google Analytics) to see if those visitors made a purchase online or visited your physical store.
- Store Visit Tracking: Several social media platforms, like Facebook, offer store visit tracking features. These features leverage location data from mobile devices to estimate how many people visited your physical store after seeing your social media ad. While not an exact measurement, it provides valuable insights into social media’s influence on offline customer behavior.
- Social Listening for Brand Mentions: Use social listening tools to monitor mentions of your brand name or location alongside keywords like “in-store” or “purchase.” This can reveal customer experiences and potentially highlight positive social media influences on offline sales.
- Customer Surveys: Conduct surveys at your physical store or through email campaigns to ask customers where they heard about your brand. This can provide direct feedback on the influence of social media on their purchasing decisions.
Please remember that measuring success is an ongoing process. By tracking the right metrics, actively listening to your audience, and leveraging the power of social media analytics tools, you can make informed decisions and ensure your social media efforts drive real business results.
Having trouble understanding your data? Need a data audit? Contact us today!