Social analytics are immensely valuable to any business, but making the business case for it can be challenging. How does one derive meaningful metrics from data? Or capture insight that proves how far your brand’s reach is expanding online? Our latest report, Making the Business Case for Social Analytics, answers these questions and more. Let’s take a peek at what you’ll find inside:
Most Misunderstood Metrics – Ever
Knowing social works and proving it are two entirely separate – and frustrating – things. Which metrics matter, and what’s the best way to communicate that data? The answer is – it depends.
It depends on the category, your brand’s goals for the campaign/quarter, and a number of other factors.
It’s important to note that there’s a vast universe of potential data to capture, measure and ultimately act upon, including:
- Strategic brand positioning
- Demographic profile of people talking about brand
- Channels, sources, and geographical intel around key product/service conversations
- Why people are buying
- What need are they satisfying with their purchase?
- Competitive advantages/savings social analytics creates
- Brand health protection value
- Customer care savings
- Accurate influencer identification savings
- Crisis avoidance
- Psychographic segments campaign targeting
- Overall audience understanding (language, lifestyle)
- Generating potential lifetime value
And in the report, we have case studies spanning a variety of verticals that demonstrate meaningful metrics and ROI in action, including:
- The cruise industry
- Hospitality and restaurants
- Media and entertainment
- Financial services
- Luxury brands
We share key performance indicators (KPIs) that brands seek to uncover, along with ways to do so.
But that’s not all. We also understand that none of this will happen without executive buy-in, so we share ideas around helping marketers manage all of this data in one place. Their time is already maxed out.
Brand Marketers Are Already Underwater
Social analytics reporting is just another demand in a long list of a marketer’s job responsibilities, which typically includes:
- Managing quarterly, monthly and weekly promotions
- Editorial calendars
- Tracking everything that’s posted to see how well it performs (or not)
- Crisis response planning
- Acting as the in-house social media knower of all things, and actually being that person
And so much more. And there’s so much context required to make most social analytics insight meaningful. If it’s not coming to you in a way that’s organized in a workable way, and exceptionally transparent (to be able to confirm results), it becomes another task a marketer must rush through to keep up. And that’s not benefitting anyone!
Many marketers, and the brands who employ them, are stuck where they are, because:
- What they’re doing is working well enough (though isn’t actually moving the needle in any way)
- Budget is already tight and time is stretched thin as it is (who has time to master a new tool? Or budget available to take a risk on something that might not be any better than what’s currently in place?)
- Doing/demonstrating more puts their budget/them at risk (leaving them wide open for even more work if they put themselves out there and do extra to get social analytics off and running)
But none of that would even come in to play, if social analytics didn’t have an accuracy problem in the minds of marketers. (The fear is unfounded with the right tool, but the concern is valid as many tools are less than accurate.)
The Social Analytics Accuracy Problem
Many marketers don’t trust their analytics. And this is due to equal parts “the tool they have isn’t as accurate as it could be” and a lack of social analytics expertise on the part of the marketer. So the tools aren’t being used properly, and when they are the effort is sporadic. And analytics only work if you measure, adapt, and redo consistently. “Always iterating” is an important mindset to adopt.
But it can be super time consuming to learn a new tool, and when one has been burned by inaccurate results once (or more than once) it puts ‘learning a new social analytics tool’ very low on the to do list!
Step one is capturing accurate results and understanding what your tool is capable of. Step 2 is shouting about it from your office rooftops.
Marketers Must Evangelize
Marketers must get in the habit of evangelizing social analytics in their organizations to create the online awareness required to move to the next level. Once everyone is speaking the same language, sharing the exceptional insight captured online will be understood and appreciated. Or at least understood.
This report gives advice around how to measure and communicate the full ROI impact your business is experiencing thanks to social analytics. And doing so with minimal risk to a marketer’s budget/role in the organization, beyond a shot at expanding each. And impressing your CEO.
What do you have to lose? Download Making the Business Case for Social Analytics and when you get to the end and want a demo of the amazing insight it shares, please reach out and we’ll be happy to do so! Or reach out ahead of reading the report and we’ll demo the platform anyway!
