Marketing Communications

TRACKING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF E-COMMUNICATIONS 537

but, for most companies and businesses, the eff ects on sales are diffi cult to trace as they oft en

take place in the offl ine distribution system. Using post-campaign research that consists of an

initial tracking of brand awareness, brand image and intention to buy before the campaign

and a post-campaign survey tracking the same metrics can deliver this kind of information.

InSites Consulting also off ers an e-ROI methodology that tracks the behaviour of customers

and prospects aft er they have visited a company’s website, by using a recontact survey. In this

way, InSites is able to calculate the ROI of a website and online advertising campaign.

There is a lot of discussion on how to measure social media performances and how marketers can calculate their

ROI. Most social media experts agree that there is not one established framework to measure social media success.

Nevertheless there are some tactics that a marketer can adjust and apply to his or her social media strategy to help

create a framework that works.

Step 1: Set the goals

Marketers need to know upfront what their goals (quantitative and qualitative) are before they can measure how

successful the efforts have been in achieving them.

What do you want to accomplish through your social media efforts? Is it selling more products, getting more

reviews, driving more traffic to the website, establishing the brand or company as a leader, generating leads,

increasing the fan base, reaching specific target groups, increasing brand awareness, etc.?

Step 2: Establish the baselines

Based on the goals from step 1, establish measurable baselines for comparison later.

Create an overview that includes several parameters like current sales figures, review counts, number of hits in

Google, statistics of the website stats, customer satisfaction and others depending on the goals. Some are easier to

measure than others.

Step 3: Track the efforts

Plenty of tools are available to measure social media efforts. Some are (freely) provided by the social media platform

itself (e.g. Facebook and WordPress), some are paid services. It is important to use more than one tool to track the

efforts, as each individual tool gives specific insight into one or more aspects of your social media presence. Be aware

that you should stick to the ones relevant for the goals that were set. If well selected a complete picture is given.

Facebook’s statistics tool, Insights, tracks and analyses demographics, engagement, referrals, click-throughs,

and more for Facebook pages. Facebook Insights breaks down the demographics and activities of a page’s fans. This

also allows the company to gain insight into how users engage with a specific post, where referrals are coming from,

how well individual posts are doing and how content is shared.

For websites or blogs that are powered by WordPress, there are a number of good plug-ins that help in analysing,

e.g. WordPress.com Stats. They provide insights on how visitors are interacting with a site: which posts are the most

popular, where incoming referrals are coming from, which key terms visitors are using to find a site, which outgoing

links are clicked, and more.

Twitter accounts can be managed and analysed via HootSuite, which has some nice analysis tools. The pro ver-

sion allows an integration of Facebook Insights and Google Analytics. This tool helps in seeing which of the tweets

BUSINESS INSIGHT

Measuring social media^237

M15_PELS3221_05_SE_C15.indd 537M15_PELS3221_05_SE_C15.indd 537 6/6/13 8:55 AM6/6/13 8:55 AM