Not All Data Is Created Equal: 5 Social Media Campaign Metrics You Should Pay Attention To...
Thursday 1:45am
April 15, 2020 (Updated 2023)
Dear fellow Digipreneur & ADthusiast,
In order to accurately gauge the effectiveness of your social media campaigns you first have to make sure that you’re actually looking at the right metrics; because the truth is that not all data is created equally.
Yet, with so much data to interpret and hundreds of metrics to analyze it can be really overwhelming trying to figure out which ones are showing success and which ones aren’t.
After all, if you don’t know what to look for, you don’t know what to improve on.
However, you’re not alone in your frustration.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, only 6% of B2C marketing respondents and 3% of B2B marketing respondents reported doing an excellent job of aligning their metrics with their content marketing goals.
This means that the majority of B2C and B2B marketers cannot accurately determine if they are seeing a return on their social media campaigns.
Nevertheless, just because you’re not alone in your frustration doesn’t mean you have to stay in the majority.
For this reason, Here are 5 social media campaign metrics you should focus on to feel less overwhelmed and more in control of the success of your campaigns.
Social Media Metric #1. Customer Acquisition Cost...
Customer Acquisition Cost tracks how much money you spend to obtain a new customer.
It’s very similar to tracking your ROI except you’re tracking how much money has been spent to create new customers, as opposed to tracking how much money has been spent to make more money.
Each one of your individual social media campaigns will all have different acquisition costs; However, these can be combined for one overall customer acquisition cost..
Social Media Metric #2. Customer Lifetime Value...
Ask yourself, will your customers buy your product every day, every week or just buy once and never return? This metric will show you how much you’ll earn from that individual person’s lifetime as your customer.
Furthermore, this information will give you the ability to determine which of your promotions are valuable, and which ones aren’t.
For instance, a promotion offering the first product for free wouldn’t be profitable if you’re selling a low-priced product at $15.00 and the lifetime value of the average customer is only one purchase in several months or years.
On the other hand, offering the first product for free would be a profitable promotion if you’re selling a low-priced product at $15.00 and the lifetime value of the average customer is a purchase every week or month.
You can use lifetime value and compare it to your customer acquisition cost (CAC) to make sure that you aren’t losing money by gaining more customers.
Social Media Metric #3. Unique Website Visitors...
Unique website visitors will tell you how many different people are viewing your website on an hourly, daily or weekly basis.
Knowing this information will help you track the overall success of your website and understand the performance of your “off-site” campaigns.
This data will also help you identify days where your marketing campaigns aren’t performing as well as they could be.
It’s also important to note that the unique website visitors metric is different than the total visitors metric: The same person will be counted as a different visitor no matter how many times they’ve visited your website on the total visitors metric.
Social Media Metric #4. Referral Sources...
The referral sources metric will help you understand which channels benefit the most from your SEO; This way you can focus more of your efforts on those channels that send you the most frequent, high-quality traffic.
Social Media Metric #5. Bounce Rate...
Visitors who leave your website quickly without interacting with the page are tracked by the bounce rate metric.
Bounce rate is important because a high bounce rate means that your website is not very marketable or engaging; your visitors are clicking off of your site immediately.
There are various reasons why this can happen:
- Poor layout and design of your website.
- The wrong target audience.
- Single-page landing page
The goal here is to get your visitors to engage and interact with your page that’s why this is an important social media campaign metric to pay attention to.
Quick Tips For Choosing The Right Metrics
Quick Tip #1. Set Goals...
This may sound obvious but in reality, setting the right goals are hard; Especially when you get overwhelmed by all of the opportunities and possibilities presented to you. However, sticking to your goals is even harder.
So in order to save yourself time, stay committed, and simplify the process of choosing the right metrics try these two approaches to goal setting
Use The S.M.A.R.T. Framework
SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely. This is a great guide/checklist for goal setting. Whether it be just for you, individually, or for your team as a whole, SMART is a good foundational framework for setting goals and choosing your metrics.
Identify Your Objectives And Key Results (OKRs)
When you’re committed to growth this is the process where you give context to your goals.
Once you identify the objectives you’re determined to accomplish over a specific period of time along with the key results that will bring you to that accomplishment you’ll be able to push the limits of what’s possible.
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Quick Tip #2. Validate And Revise Metrics You’re Already Tracking With The T.I.E. Framework...
Choosing the right metrics is a complicated task but it can be an easy-to-understand and fairly straightforward process. Here’s how…just try the TIE method.
TIE stands for Trackable, Important And Explainable.
It’s an easy framework to remember because the right metrics are always trackable, important and explainable.
Conclusion...
Data no longer has to be overwhelming. Remember, you’re in control over the success of your campaigns. Just keep track of these metrics and practice these tips and you’ll positively affect your ROI.
Well, until next time my friend…stay strong, stay healthy, stay wealthy.
Sincerely,
John Selvey