How To Start Effectively Measuring Your Paid Media Performance And Achieve Astounding Results.
Are you broadcasting news and information about your business, answering customer questions or engaging with your target audience on social media? What is your company trying to accomplish with your advertising spend? The answers to these questions will help you determine how to measure your success and which KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to use.
Made to measure goals
The point about any goal is to be able to measure against it. If you’re trying to increase brand awareness, metrics like volume, reach, amplification and exposure will tell you how far your message is spreading. Retweets, shares, comments, replies and participation measure engagement. Share of voice will tell you how you compare to your competitors, and how much of the overall conversation in your industry is about your brand. If you’re chasing website visits, URL shares, clicks and conversions will deliver the KPIs you seek. It’s worth your while to ask yourself what visitors to your website do once they get there.
Drill the data
Once you’ve chosen the metrics relevant to your business, it’s time to find the appropriate tools to measure them. Most social media platforms provide native analytics that will help you drill down the data to the finest detail. A word of advice, it’s easy to get lost in all the numbers and forget about the bigger picture. When you measure your performance, you need to set a benchmark that you can measure against. Benchmarks will help you put your performance in context.
Most social media metrics work in real-time, so it makes sense to set your metrics or set up trackers before launching your campaigns. It will make accessing the data much easier later. Give your campaigns time to work as well. Keep in mind that social networks need time to approve your ads. You won’t see desired results within a day. Consider that some campaigns you’re running might take some time for the AI to learn before delivering or optimising to your target audience.
Monitor and report
Ask yourself how well you did, compared to what you expected, and how do your campaigns compare to competitor campaigns or related products? It’s easy to run reports via tools like Hootsuite or Semrush.
Decide how often you want to run reports. Do you run them after your campaigns have ended, weekly, quarterly or monthly? The point is to run them regularly and to set benchmarks as you go along. Regularly check on your metrics to ensure they deliver the data you set out to gather.
Data is like good red wine. It matures beautifully. Once you’ve run the same metrics and reports a number of times, you will appreciate how valuable your first reports are. They help with setting benchmarks or shifting them.
Visualising your data will help you report on how your company is doing to your superiors. There are various ways of reporting but drowning people in data is not one of them. Look at Perceptual Edge if you want to read up and learn more about visualising data and how you can benefit from it. There are various tools like Google Data Studio and Databox that will help you create captivating graphs. Most importantly, provide context to all the figures so that people understand what they mean.
A step to the left
Working with social data and campaigns is like making a made-to-measure garment for someone. You work according to a pattern, cut the fabric, pin it to the person’s individual measurements and adjust it to fit. It’s now time to adjust your metrics and goals. See if you are measuring what you set out to gain insight into. Figure out how you can improve, make some changes and measure some more. If you need to adjust your goals, do so.
No two markets, campaigns or products are the same. You can have as many recipes, patterns or instructions as you can find, but you have to adapt them as you go. It’s much like the payment industry. All the clients we serve at Truevo are different. Some prefer Apple Pay as their standard payment method. Others love the ability to have full control via Truevo’s Direct API or that they can easily configure pages via our Hosted Payment Page. Whatever your needs are, speak to us. We’d love to crunch the numbers with you.
