Proving Your Worth: How to Measure the Success of Your Social Marketing

Wish you could tie your social media activities to measurable outcomes? Wondering what tools and techniques can help?

In this article, you’ll discover how to measure the success of your social media marketing activities

The Importance of Measuring Your Social Media Marketing Success

Social media has become an integral part of most businesses' marketing strategies. However, many marketers struggle to effectively track and measure their social media success.

As a marketer, it is crucial to understand the impact of your social media marketing activities on your business's bottom line. It becomes difficult to justify the time and resources invested in social media marketing without proper tracking and measurement. As Emeric Ernoult, co-founder and CEO of Agorapulse, points out, marketers need to prove their worth to their clients or bosses, especially in challenging times when budgets may be tight.

Measuring social media success also enables marketers to continually improve their strategies. By understanding what works and what doesn't, marketers can optimize their efforts and allocate resources more effectively. This constant iteration and improvement are key to improving results and expanding marketing's reach and impact.

From a CEO's perspective, quantifying each employee's value to the business is essential. When faced with tough times and the need to downsize, Emeric explains that the people he would consider letting go are those whose value to the business is uncertain. This highlights the importance of marketers being able to quantify and demonstrate their contributions to the company's success, as those who cannot are at a higher risk of losing their jobs.

How to Measure Social Media Marketing Success

#1: Identify Trackable Elements in Your Social Media Marketing 

Before diving into how to measure social media marketing success, it is essential to understand what you can track. Emeric emphasizes that you can track anything with a link, regardless of the platform or medium. This includes social media posts, emails, ads, and more.

However, it is equally important to recognize that not everything on social media is trackable. For example, conversations in private messages or “dark social” channels like WhatsApp are not attributable to specific individuals or conversations. Additionally, many social media activities, such as brand awareness posts or content aimed at positioning your company in a certain way, may not have direct links or measurable business impact.

It's important to note that business-to-business (B2B) companies, especially those offering high-ticket items or services, may find it more challenging to generate direct sales through their social media campaigns than business-to-consumer (B2C) companies. While a consumer might impulsively purchase a product they find appealing on social media, it's less likely for a B2B buyer to make a substantial business purchase without a more considered approach.

As a result, B2B companies often use social media as a tool for generating leads and building relationships with potential customers. Emeric suggests that these companies should focus on creating valuable content that addresses their target audience's pain points and interests rather than solely promoting their products or services. B2B companies can attract potential customers and encourage them to engage with their brand by providing helpful resources, such as downloadable guides, whitepapers, or webinars.

For example, Agorapulse wanted to gauge interest and attract potential users for a free employee advocacy tool it developed. To achieve this, the team searched for tweets mentioning “employee advocacy” to identify individuals and businesses interested in the topic. Many of these tweets contained questions about employee advocacy, such as whether it is effective, the best practices for implementing an employee advocacy program, and if anyone could recommend a good employee advocacy tool. 

The team then replied to these tweets, offering their free employee advocacy tool as a solution and including a trackable link to the tool. Agorapulse generated interest in its employee advocacy tool by engaging with relevant conversations, providing value, and driving targeted traffic to its website. This approach also allowed the company to build relationships with potential customers and establish its expertise in employee advocacy.

When planning your social media strategy, it is essential to identify the areas where you can include trackable links. These may include:

• Social media posts on platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and X
• Instagram Stories and bio links
• Comments and conversations on social media posts
• Direct messages (DMs) on social media platforms
• Paid social media ads

For example, let's say a small business sells plant-based medicine. The company creates content on social media to educate its target audience about specific illnesses and alternative treatments. While its posts don't directly sell its products, it engages with its audience in the comments section and directs interested individuals to its website or products when appropriate. By including trackable links in these comments and DMs, it can attribute sales and conversions to its social media metrics.

Emeric shares another example of an Australian-based travel agency: They post weekly special promotions on Facebook, often generating sales of around $4K–$5K per post. By tracking the links in these posts, they can directly attribute this revenue to their social media marketing efforts and make data-driven decisions about continuing or expanding this strategy. 

#2: Implement UTM Parameters for Granular Tracking 

To effectively track social media marketing success, it is crucial to use UTM (Urchin) parameters in your links. UTM parameters are additional Tracking Module information added to a URL that helps to identify the source, medium, and campaign associated with the link.

When creating UTM parameters, it is essential to establish a consistent naming convention across your entire company and all marketing efforts. This ensures that data is accurately tracked and can be easily analyzed later. Some key things to keep in mind when implementing UTM parameters include:

• Use lowercase letters for consistency, as UTM parameters are case-sensitive
• Include relevant information such as the social media platform, post type, author, or campaign name
• Use underscores or dashes to separate elements within the UTM parameters
• Ensure that all team members are using the same naming convention consistently

For example, a concert hall in London uses highly detailed UTM parameters in its campaigns. It includes information such as the performer's name, the show's name, date, time, and the social media account on which it was promoted. This level of granularity allows the concert hall to search Google Analytics for specific shows or dates and understand which efforts drive ticket sales.

Emeric stresses the importance of having a consistent naming convention for UTM parameters, sharing that his own company struggled with this. He explains that they eventually created a comprehensive Google Spreadsheet detailing the naming conventions for each type of link and campaign, significantly improving their ability to track and analyze their data. 

#3: Leverage Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager 

Marketers need the right social media analytics tools to track and measure their marketing success. Google Analytics is the most widely used web analytics platform and is essential for understanding how social media efforts impact your website traffic, conversions, and sales.

When setting up Google Analytics, it is important to implement conversion tracking properly. This involves placing tracking tags on the thank you or confirmation pages that users see after completing a desired action, such as making a purchase or submitting a form. Without proper conversion tracking, marketers may be tracking all website visits but not the actual conversions that result from those visits. 

You can download CSV files from Google Analytics and import them into Google Sheets. From there, you can create graphs and charts and perform calculations to analyze and visualize the data, such as traffic from different social networks, conversions attributed to social media, etc.

Emeric compares this reporting process to what he does with his sales team. He looks at data visualizations in Google Sheets to gain insights into what's working, what's not, and where to investigate further. The data lets you have constructive conversations about optimizing your social media marketing strategies.

In addition to Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager is another valuable tool for tracking social media marketing success. 

Google Tag Manager allows marketers to manage and deploy tracking tags on their websites without relying on developers. By using Google Tag Manager, marketers can streamline the process of implementing UTM parameters and conversion tracking across their websites.

#4: Interpret and Report on Your Social Media Marketing Data 

Once you have implemented tracking and gathered data on your social media marketing efforts, the next step is to interpret that data and use it to inform your strategy.  

For example, a real estate agency in Crystal Coast, North Carolina, promotes luxury beach house rentals, some of which can cost upwards of $12K per week, through carefully crafted Facebook posts. 

By including trackable links in its Facebook posts, the agency can attribute bookings directly to its social media marketing efforts. By tracking the revenue generated from these posts, the agency discovered that a single post could generate between $24K–$36K in bookings, as customers often rent these high-end properties for 2–3 weeks at a time.

When analyzing social media marketing data, it is essential to remember that the data you are seeing is only a fraction of the overall impact of your efforts.

As Emeric notes, much of what happens due to social media marketing is not directly trackable in today's complex digital landscape. However, the data you can track can indicate the broader impact of your efforts. 

For example, suppose you are investing equal time and resources into three different social media channels, but one channel is driving significantly more website traffic and conversions. In that case, it indicates that the channel performs better overall, even if you cannot track all the resulting sales or conversions.

Think of the data you can track like the tip of the iceberg—it's the visible portion that you can measure. However, a much larger portion of the iceberg lies beneath the surface, representing the broader impact of your social media efforts, even if it's not directly trackable.

When reporting on your social media marketing success to clients or bosses, providing context and explaining that the data represents a sample of the overall impact is important. Some key metrics to include in your reporting may consist of:

• Website traffic generated from social media efforts
• Conversions and sales attributed to social media marketing
• Engagement rates on social media posts
• Reach and impressions of social media content
• Breakdown of social media performance by platform or campaign

For example, let's say your Facebook post received only 7 likes, which may not seem impressive at first glance. However, the post generated 19 link clicks to your website. If the page visitors were directed to was a high-converting or highly valuable page, this data provides a much clearer picture of the post's actual impact and value.

By presenting data in a clear and visually compelling way, such as through graphs and charts, marketers can effectively communicate the value of their social media efforts and make data-driven decisions about where to allocate resources in the future.

Other Notes From This Episode

• Connect with Michael Stelzner @Stelzner on Instagram and @Mike_Stelzner on X.
• Watch this interview and other exclusive content from Social Media Examiner on YouTube.

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