Posts Tagged ‘marketing metrics’

Terametric Marketing Predictions for 2011: The continuing importance of data and social media

Posted in Enterprise 2.0, Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis by Kim Cole on December 9th, 2010
 

As we begin to close the books on this year, we turn to set our goals and budgets for next year. In doing so, you’ll read and hear several predictions regarding the challenges that social media in 2011 will bring us. As you develop your Social Media Marketing goals for next year, here are two critical pieces of insight that build off solid research into social media and data analytics.

Data will be King

Source:http://www.sxc.hu/profile/dimitri_c

There’s no doubt that the amount of business data available is voluminous. In fact, The MIT Sloan Management Review and IBM recently published a report that analyzed a survey given to nearly 3000 executives regarding their company’s business process around data analytics. The study found that top performing companies use analytics 5 times more than lower performing companies. This study looked at data across the entire organization, not just the departments that historically have been measured such as Finance, Operations and Sales/Marketing.

1. But just having data won’t make you successful. To maximize return on investment, or ROI, one must step back from the data and first develop a clear set of goals. Once goals are established, one can then select the parameters one wants to measure and start to benchmark current performance. Clear goals, together with critical benchmarks make the data valuable to the organization and will help marketers to adjust their efforts to achieve all their business and marketing goals.

The MIT study also pointed out that data analytics is so important to the executives from the top performing companies that they believe information and analytics allows them to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Additionally, the top executives will place even more emphasis on analytics from emerging platforms such as social media over the next 2 years.

2. Social Media Marketing will continue to grow. Stunmedia recently summarized a report from IDC in which IDC predicts that social business software will grow by 38% through 2014 and that more than 40% of SMBs will be using social networks by the end of 2011.

Additionally, eMarketer shows that online advertising will continue to increase in 2011. However, maximizing the return on that marketing investment will be also critical.

The successful Social Media Marketer will recognize that in order to convince the executives to spend money on Social Media Marketing they will have to use data to present a strategic campaign, with specific parameters for benchmarks and metrics that will tie back to positive and improving ROI.

So your goals for 2011 will require that we continue to use data to prove the value of social media investment in order to extend a winning competitive lead in the market place.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Enterprise 2.0, Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis | View Comments

3 Steps to use Twitter ROI to increase your marketing budget, today

Posted in Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis by Anu Reddy on November 28th, 2010
 

This post is Terametric’s Twitter ROI Series leading up to the December 9, 2010 Webinar: How-To measure and improve your Twitter Marketing ROIwith Jim Sterne and Kyle Lacy.

The Question: Do companies maximize return on their marketing investment (ROI) in Twitter or are they only investing in Twitter marketing for the sake of having a presence? Or, rather, do companies invest in Twitter because it seems like the “right” Social Media thing to do? Although Twitter registration is free, investing in this channel is not a zero cost activity. A good Twitter strategy requires resources that are closely aligned with expected impact or financial returns.

Organizations are skeptical about allocating resources to social media marketing while creating marketing budgets, unless there is a quantifiable return on investment.


Source: Brian Solis

According to a survey by OneForty, when respondents were asked whether they would be interested in Twitter’s paid advertising product, Promoted Tweets. More than half the respondents said they would need to see more metrics to understand the ROI, first.

We agree that it is already difficult to persuade your boss to allocate more dollars to Twitter marketing without a sound business hypothesis. Given the immense difficulty facing Twitter marketers to justify social media investments, here are three easy steps to increase protect and even increase your Twitter marketing budget as you survive your 2011 budgeting cycle.

1. Track your performance
The first step to increasing your marketing budget is to track key industry topics, themes, influencers and hashtags while measuring sentiment, influence, reach, loyalty, retention and demographics. While some of these metrics are more important than the others, it is crucial to monitor all these metrics daily or weekly and to benchmark their performance in each campaign.

2. Calculate Twitter ROI
Next, calculate Twitter ROI using this easy method. If your inbound Twitter impact is greater than the outbound Twitter engagement costs, then you have a positive ROI. Measuring Twitter marketing ROI will highlight what are the appropriate investment levels and correct returns needed to deliver a positive business impact.

3. Create an investment strategy
Finally, Twitter ROI measurement will give you insight into how to invest your time and resources going forward. Use these insights to maximize the Twitter marketing strategy to get a bigger bang for your buck.

With these three steps, you can present the financial impact of Twitter marketing on your organization’s most critical business needs. This type of marketing management leadership should definitely help persuade your boss to increase your marketing budget, or at the very least, not reduce it in 2011.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis | View Comments

Top 3 Critical Outbound Twitter Metrics You Should Not Ignore

Posted in Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis, Uncategorized, Wendy Troupe's Perspectives by Anu Reddy on November 18th, 2010
 

This post is Terametric’s Twitter ROI Series leading up to the December 9, 2010 Webinar: “How-To measure and improve your Twitter Marketing ROI” with Jim Sterne and Kyle Lacy, and Wendy Troupe.

Last week, we covered the top 3 critical inbound Twitter metrics. We started with definitions of inbound and outbound twitter marketing activities. The definitions of inbound and outbound Twitter metrics, as per last week’s post, in case you missed it, are listed below:

Inbound metric is a metric that measures the customer responses to your Social Media marketing or your brand’s impacting the Twitter channel.

Outbound metric is any metric that measures the marketing activities you must execute within the Twitter channel. This is your investment cost.

As a follow up, let’s analyze the top 3 critical outbound Twitter metrics.

Twitter tools
Source: www.blog.perksconsulting.com

1. Number of lists
“Lists” on Twitter is the equivalent of “Groups” on Facebook. It is an easy way to group those users you follow on Twitter. Lists enable you to view curated Twitter streams of the latest tweets from a particular group of users. You can keep up with relevant tweets, and conversely, it allows the Twitter-verse to keep up with you. You can be on someone’s Twitter list, even if they don’t follow you. Adding lists curates and segments conversations, thereby making it easier to manage conversations and topics.

2. Referencing a hashtag and/or bit.ly?
Twitter Hashtags are a commonly used to add context to your tweets. Referencing tweets with hashtags makes it easier for Twitter users to search and to follow specific topics. Companies and brands should define unique, yet short, hashtags for easy search and referencing. Wendy Troupe recommends that Twitter marketers use a site like TagDef to provide information about what specific hashtags represent and how Twitter users may search for them. Bit.ly is a service that creates shortened URLS coupled to real-time link tracking. Bit.ly allows users to view complete traffic data for their links. This information is invaluable. Using hashtags and bit.ly are critical to measure performance of Twitter inbound marketing activities such retweets and click-stream traffic.

3. Sentiment of tweets
What kind of sentiment are you creating on Twitter? Sentiment analysis varies depending on whom you ask. However, most sentiment analysis breaks down tweet content into positive, negative, or neutral sentiment. All Twitter users desire to maximize the amount of positive sentiment generated and measured. Some ways of managing sentiment successfully are:
• Engage often with customers and followers to generate stronger and deeper relationships
• Retweet tweets with positive sentiment to amplify positive word of mouth around relevant topics
• Set up a reactive program for both positive and negative tweets

Now that we have covered both critical inbound and outbound metrics, are we missing any others? Feel free to share in the comments below if you think we have missed out on any other critical Twitter metrics that are critical to maximizing Twitter marketing ROI.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis, Uncategorized, Wendy Troupe's Perspectives | View Comments

2 Easy ways NOT to Maximize your Twitter Marketing ROI

Posted in Social Media ROI by Taariq Lewis on November 14th, 2010
 

This post is Terametric’s Twitter ROI Series leading up to the December 9, 2010 Webinar: How-To measure and improve your Twitter Marketing ROI with Jim Sterne and Kyle Lacy.

Twitter, is quickly evolving into a critical marketing channel to engage customers beyond the one-way broadcast of traditional media. Twitter marketers, however, still measure their success with traditional measures. They conduct marketing activities in the medium and then they measure the success of marketing activity by the number of completed goals such as increase in revenue, customer satisfaction, brand visibility, and brand awareness.
Got_Tweet_ROI

Regardless of how marketers currently measure their Twitter Marketing activity, success or failure, there are a few simple, yet critical uses of the Twitter channel that will always reduce and minimize Twitter Marketing ROI. Below are the top ways that one can fail to maximize ROI impact on Twitter, without even trying.

1. Don’t Complete Your Human Presence on Twitter.
A simple way to be outcompeted and outmaneuvered on Twitter is to not make the required investment in delivering a fully human and completed Twitter profile. Here are the areas where you can, guaranteed, reduce your Twitter marketing ROI impact.
• Don’t create a complete a full Twitter BIO
• Don’t create a professional and personable profile Image that humanizes your account
• Maximize use of logos and brands instead of humans
• Don’t include your accurate geography location in your profile

2. Don’t tweet consistently and relevantly on your Twitter Channel
Industry authority or influence can be easily measured in two qualitative measures. Either you are tweeting about the industry or the industry is tweeting about you. If you’re not #1 in your industry and you’re not tweeting about the industry, then chances are that your tweeting impact will be low. Authority in communication can maximize the ROI objectives of your Twitter account. Here are the areas where you can, guaranteed, reduce your Twitter Marketing influence and resulting ROI:
• Don’t reach out to influencers on the themes and topics of your industry
• Don’t generate immense positive sentiment around your tweet topics and themes
• Don’t generate weekly tweet volume and quality to match your critical competitors

Most Social Media Managers are trying to maximize their Twitter marketing ROI. As such, it may be easier to avoid these pitfalls to ensure that the Twitter channel performs optimally in its goal to deliver marketing wins and increased customer engagement.
Learn more about Terametric at: http://www.terametric.com/about

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Social Media ROI | View Comments

3 Reasons Why Social Media Charts and Graphs are Useless

Posted in Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis by Anu Reddy on November 11th, 2010
 

There are social media many monitoring, measurement, and analytics tools that will give you as many pretty charts and graphs of marketing your efforts in the social media marketing channel. These graphs provide statistics on volume of content published, sentiment analysis, grading, scoring across channels like Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, etc. However, do these charts actually help you craft an optimal social media channel marketing strategy? What works, and what doesn’t? Is it quantifiable? Which channels are crucial for you to invest in? How do you know your marketing progress relative to your prior performance, prior resource investment, or even the competitive landscape?

Graphs
Source: www.jpowered.com

1. Social Media charts don’t tell you whether your efforts are worthwhile
The last time you looked at a statistic or a graph or a chart, did it tell you where you get the biggest bang for your buck? You are investing resources across social media channels. It is critical to know what social media channels are most effective for your customer base.

2. Social Media charts don’t tell you what your competitors are doing right
Every company is measuring its efforts. And if they are not, they should be. Do the graphs and charts show you what your competitors are doing well or how they are doing it? There are tools that grade your effort against “others”, but marketers need tools that benchmark their campaign performance over time. Only with benchmarks can one understand what you or your competitors are doing right.

3. Social Media charts, by themselves, don’t give actionable insights
Graphs and charts will give you lots of great information. However, what you need is insight to show you how you need to improve and where to invest scarce marketing resources. Actionable insights are critical to building a holistic marketing strategy.

As marketers, it is imperative to be able to create and use a tool that can address these issues and concerns to enable more efficient decision-making. Make sure your social media measurement and analytics tools report the return on your marketing investment and provide insights into what activities require your focus and what activities do not.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis | View Comments

3 ways to tell if you’re a Social Media Chart Porn Addict

Posted in Social Media ROI by Taariq Lewis on November 10th, 2010
 

I’m with you. I do it myself. I am addicted to my Social Media charts. I fire up my latest social media channel measurement tool. It’s awesome because once I enter my Twitter handle or login via Facebook, I have access to great charts. However, without a clear understanding of what exactly we’re trying to measure and why, it’s my view that most social media charts and graphs fail to maximize marketing ROI and are no more than cheap, chart porn. We like to watch it and we love it when it’s free. So here are my favorite 3 ways to tell if you’re a Social Media Chart Porn Addict.

1. Your get pleasure seeing your Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn numbers go up each time you check your favorite Social Media analytics tool. Each week, we’re tweeting as hard as we can so we can add more followers who we hope must be listening. If we can just keep it going, our Social Media impact will increase. How can you not get excited about that? Each new follower tick upwards is a big turn-on.

Twitter_Goes_Up
Source: http://twittercounter.com/taariqlewis

2. You get a little depressed when your Twitter numbers go down. Maybe you couldn’t keep it up like you did, last week. Maybe it was your last intense and heated Tweetup turned a few good folks off. If we’re always engaged, how come folks lose interest? Were we just off message?

Twitter_Goes_Down
Source: http://twittercounter.com/taariqlewis

3. You and I have Klout envy. There’s always someone else above you with bigger Social Media influence, more Social Media energy and even great positive sentiment. These superstars must be raking in so much more returns on their investment in Social Media channels, like Twitter, they are the people to imitate!

Klout_envy
Source: http://www.klout.com

There is a way to cure the Social Media Chart porn addiction! Take action on your Social Media strategy. Stop chasing the Social Media charts and start maximizing your inbound impact with a roadmap of outbound engagement.

1. Identify your inbound objectives
2. Identify your outbound resources
3. Set a trial start and stop date
4. Execute your Social Media Campaign
5. Measure your resulting performance against your expected or desired performance
6. Optimize your outbound activities and run your campaign again.

That’s it. Now we can get on our with our social media lives!

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Social Media ROI | View Comments

3 critical inbound Twitter metrics that maximize Social Media ROI

Posted in Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis by Anu Reddy on November 9th, 2010
 

There is a plethora of performance metrics that measure performance in various Social Media channels, including Twitter. These metrics usually track either inbound or outbound Twitter activities which we think are critical for Social Media Marketers to maximize their Twitter Marketing Return on Investment, ROI.

Let’s define an inbound Twitter metric as a metric that measures the impacts your Social Media marketing or your brand is driving in the Twitter channel. Let’s also define an outbound Twitter metric as any metric that measures the marketing activities you must execute in the Twitter channel. Below, we will share the top three inbound Twitter metrics that each Social Media marketer should not ignore.

1. Number of Follower Mentions you receive
The larger the number of followers you have, the wider your Twitter influence and the more people will listen. Thus, gaining more followers should increase and widen your brand’s exposure. However, simple follower addition is not enough, it is important that your followers are also talking about you. The best way to do this is to get referrals from your followers to their networks. Thus, you should also measure how many of your followers mention you in their tweets. In marketing parlance, this is simply word of mouth marketing.

Twitter_ROI_Pictures
Source: http://www.saschakimmel.com

2. Number of Influencers Who Follow You
While it is good to have a large following, it is crucial to secure as many important “influencers” as your own followers. There are influencers (i.e. followers who use Twitter prolifically and in turn everyone follows for the official “word”) in every niche industry. The aim is to create compelling content that results in these influencers following you as they have the greatest impact in the Twitter-sphere.

3. Unique Messages (RT) Retweeted
Lastly, everyone loves to see their tweets retweeted on Twitter. There is a distinction between how many times an individual tweet is retweeted and the totally number of retweets you receive. This measurement should be calculated as an average to determine consistency of content and what specific topics and insights resonate with your Twitter-sphere following and the community at large.

Are there other inbound Twitter marketing metrics that you believe are equally or more important to measure performance? Please share those you think are important in our comments below.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Social Media ROI, Strategy and Analysis | View Comments

A Peek at Terametric’s Metric Special Sauce

Posted in Social Media ROI by Matt Carter on April 23rd, 2010
 

Picture 3

Several companies provide multi-channel measurement capabilities.  Each has a dominant channel measurement “wheelhouse” with expansion services to measure and analyze a hand full of additional channels.  The issue is that each company measures and analyzes in terms of individual channel metrics.

While that can provide an amazingly accurate picture of the performance of a single channel, it doesn’t really provide you with an intuitive way to compare that performance with other channels to truly optimize your marketing mix.  Who’s to say that an email click-thru rate of 6.7% contributes more to overall marketing performance than 250,000 impressions?

Picture 5

Terametric uses a mix of data collected from publicly available, proprietary and social media sources to quantify the performance of each individual channel and through a proprietary algorithm, normalizes performance metrics into a common scoring system.  This allows our clients to:

  1. understand channel performance individually and comprehensively
  2. quickly identify under-performing channels and drill down into underlying factors
  3. understand which channels contribute the most to total marketing performance
  4. create an accurate marketing optimization roadmap to maximize marketing investment

The ability to quantify channel performance, accurately correlate it to marketing return and study changes in both over time allows Terametric to accurately calculate a company’s marketing ROI.

Let us know if you have any questions.  I’m sure some have occurred as you’ve read through this.  Maybe you wonder about the validity of our conversion of channel-specific metrics into a common numeric scoring system?  Whatever you’re questions may be, please let us know.  We’ll do our best to answer them fully and quickly.  Fire away, friends!

Tags: , ,
Posted in Social Media ROI | View Comments

Friday Addition 2: A True Story About the Power of Negative Sentiment

Posted in Strategy and Analysis by Matt Carter on March 17th, 2010
 

On Saturday, March 6, my neighbor Bill and I were standing in my front yard, admiring my new car (new to me, anyway). It was a generically-colored, 2005 Subaru Outback. I was proud of the new purchase.

I spoke highly of the dealership’s buying process and the wagon’s features. In fact, as I pointed out the multi-function roof-rack, I recounted the ease of the sales process in great detail. I talked of the twist and turns of the negotiation and the willingness of the dealership’s very capable staff to bend to our needs. Just as I’m getting to the part where the dealership threw in four, new, all-season tires at no cost, my fiance hops in the Subaru to run some errands. As she backed out of the drive-way, the wagon emits a loud and shrill squeal.

Bill then turns to me and says, “Where’d you say you bought that car?”

Do you see what happened? Until the moment the car, with a loud squeal, cast a negative light on the car dealership, Bill wasn’t even really paying attention to the details of my story. It wasn’t a priority for him. In the grand scheme of things, the story didn’t affect his life in the least. He was merely passing a pleasant moment with a neighbor. There was no real relevance to him.

The loud squeal set off an alarm bell inside of him. It triggered his evolutionary threat-avoidance system. Suddenly my story did have relevance and the details of the tale became a roadmap for avoiding a potential hazard. Not only did he feel the details relevant to himself but, he felt them relevant to others as well.

Despite only mentioning this to Bill, in the days following this exchange, my neighbors Pat and Pete asked about the situation and the dealership. In my small, Maine neighborhood, negative sentiment went viral right before my eyes.

I contacted the dealership about the squeal. The dealership picked the car up from my house, replaced a slightly rusted brake rotor and returned the car to me a day later with very sincere apologies.

The evening the wagon returned, my neighbors, one-by-one, meandered over to check on the outcome of the situation. Each was pleasantly surprised by the no-hassle, no-questions-asked manner the dealership employed to satisfy my issue. The dealership gained themselves three, maybe more, new admirers that night.

As the situation illustrates, negative sentiment often has a greater potential value than positive. It has an uncanny ability to awaken people’s attention. It can create a strong and immediate relevance where previously there was none.

Negative sentiment also presents brands with an amazing opportunity that positive sentiment sometimes lacks. It provides an often well-attended forum to display genuine concern, a desire to listen and a willingness to act. It allows brands engage with customers on previously unavailable dimensions, those of humility and humanity.

Related Posts with Thumbnails

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Strategy and Analysis | View Comments