How do you measure marketing success? There’s one way: eyeballs. Then there’s another way: response. In an era of constant media – social and otherwise – immersion, it’s hard enough to get the first and nearly impossible to gauge the second. But, that’s the business we’re in at EyeTraffic Media and something we think all marketers should provide to their clients. The era of unaccountability has been put out to pasture as clients have begun to demand what they rightfully deserve: ROI.

Thankfully social media bestowed upon marketers throngs of new numbers and mountains of data that enabled them to measure just about anything. Or so it seemed. Social media brought as many challenges as it did boons as far as developing useful metrics. We now have the three F’s of Social Media – Friends, Fans, and Followers – clickthrough, bounce, and conversion rates, and more ratios than we can hardly handle.

The numbers behind social media have spawned jobs, departments, and entire organizations. For true marketers, it’s both beautiful and demanding. The trick is figuring out what metrics are meaningful and which aren’t. Just like every marketing era before the present, the tools of the discipline have been twisted and turned into a sophisticated smoke-and-mirrors show. Some promise to multiply your followers, jumpstart your blog views, and improve an obscure little term called “engagement”. Measuring social media marketing campaigns can get downright silly, even with numbers behind them.

However, with social media, we can monitor consumer activity closer than ever before with click paths, destination, time on site, and ad tolerance; user behavior tracking that was rarely achieved – if ever – with traditional media. With all of this fantastic information, it’s easy to get caught up in just having the data and making hasty adjustments. But we must always remember, no matter how shiny, new, and sophisticated the information we possess gets, a simple piece of Marketing 101: start with objectives.

Not only does each organization have unique objectives, but campaigns may also have varying goals. The problem is, social media came to most of us with such speed and potential that many organizations failed to develop a new strategy. We don’t treat them like traditional media, so why should we use the same strategy? If most organizations stepped back and thought about their original reason for getting on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and the like, my estimation is it would boil down to this:

• Use social media for marketing.

Really? Would you say that with other mediums like broadcast or print? I hope not.

The point is, more sophisticated media demand more sophisticated analysis. When marketers didn’t possess as much information, they had an excuse not to dig through it. But now, they must use it for the sake of their clients, because they’ll demand it at some point.

Now, how do you measure social media? Whoa. You’re skipping a step. First decide what you want to do with social media, then decide how to measure it.

To help get the hang of it, below are some resources for social media monitoring – not measuring – that will give you data to help gauge your social media presence:

Viralheat

Social Mention

Techrigy

So, get an assessment and see how you stack-up. If your organization is completely off the grid, this is a good starting point: objectives. Then you can pick from the litany of metrics to decide how to measure your success on reaching those objectives.

| Read Part 1 |

Ask yourself this: When was the last time you bought a product or used a service after hearing about it from a traditional medium like TV commercial or magazine ad? From another perspective, how do you think clients – from the cellular-deprived consumer who dropped a phone in the toilet to the airline looking to upgrade its fleet – make decisions and find out about you? 

With the scales tipping in favor of new and social media, word-of-mouth is more prevalent and influential than ever. Not only is this message powerful because it’s passed efficiently via social media from trusted sources, but also because the amount of time consumers spend on social media continues to increase. For supporting research and data, check out the Nielsen report “Social Networking’s New Global Footprint" (Note: opens as a PDF).

80% of EyeTraffic Media’s new clients come from referrals, which is basically word-of-mouth. How do we accomplish that? By providing effective, measurable results through the implementation of tactical interactive marketing campaigns, including helping our clients use social media in their favor. That statement isn’t to pat ourselves on the back, but notice that nowhere does it say “by using word-of-mouth marketing”. 

We GENERATE word-of-mouth by providing exceptional marketing solutions for clients. That is, our services are remarkable; our past and current clients are compelled to talk about them. That’s how we, a marketing consultancy executing the lion’s share of our tactics through new media, make word-of-mouth work in our favor.

Abandon the mindset of “using” word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth is an outcome, not a tactic in itself. This type of buzz can be induced by fantastic products, extraordinary service, innovative methods, controversial practices, and a myriad of other reasons people start talking. Of course, word-of-mouth can be negative as well, but don’t let that scare you. From our standpoint, the best marketing advice strangely comes from Bonnie Raitt: give ‘em something (good) to talk about.

In this two-post entry, hopefully you’ve learned a bit about social media. But finding information on social media is like drinking from a fire hydrant. Thankfully, you can continue your social media immersion in t-minus 12 days on July 22 @ 12 EST/ 9 PST when EyeTraffic Media and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) join forces for a webinar – Measuring Social Media Effectively. This 1-hour session will focus on just that: measuring your social media efforts. In the crowded landscape of social media, it’s easy to join the conversation but difficult to know if all the chatter is adding up. Best of all, the webinar is FREE. Bring your thinking cap, questions, and find out how you can take your social media understanding to a measurable level. Click the badge below to register.

Every so often you’ll come across a Web site or textbook that lists “word-of-mouth” as a tactic in the marketer’s arsenal. At first thought, it doesn’t seem crazy; word-of-mouth marketing is often an important consideration in spreading a company’s message, gaining customer referrals, and building goodwill. 

Word-of-mouth is at the essence of social media. Twitter, Facebook, and the blogosphere are basically hyper-efficient platforms for making word-of-mouth happen. Social media are the striking surface for the match and you’re more likely to start a fire by using them in concert (unless you’re able to get a spark from the sole of a shoe – but I wouldn’t count on that on a desert island). In short, social media have bestowed upon marketers a way to potentially facilitate buzz with the click of a mouse.

But …

Here’s the thing: word-of-mouth marketing is still the “effect” in this casual relationship. All word-of-mouth starts with a noteworthy product/service experience or a piece of wise or salacious information. Now, since it’s unlikely you’re working with the very latter, think about what makes your company, what it provides, or what it says worth telling others about. 

And that’s where the crux exists and we must make a crucial distinction. This means the value your company provides must extend past the person it serves directly. The value must be worth spreading. After all, the spreaders – or as Seth Godin calls them, “sneezers” – are putting their reputations as sages on the line to vouch for you or your company. Ask this: What companies do you trust enough to do that?

That being said, social media have made it both easier and harder for you to give the spreaders a message in the right format and clarity to share it with social networks. For example, a positive experience at Great Clips might not be so easy (or remotely interesting) to express on Facebook. However, if Great Clips set up a Twitter account for the freshly shorn to anonymously tweet about their experiences or take an in-salon satisfaction survey that publishes results in real-time, it would be more compelling. Now, to use that to the company’s advantage, Great Clips must satisfy its customers. Though, isn’t that the idea anyway?

Come back tomorrow for Part 2 to learn more about word-of-mouth and its love/hate relationship with social media. In the meantime, click HERE to see a success story with social media coming from an unexpected source: Priceline. One highlight – after customers secure a hotel, flight, or rental car via the "Name Your Own Price" option, they can brag about their bidding prowess on an automatically-generated deal tweet. Check it out: