Jumpstarting Brands
Creative insights into launching new brands and products and re-launching stalled brands from Lindsay, Stone & Brigg's marketing, PR and interactive teams.
What Social Media Analytics Do You Need to Know to Make Better Marketing Decisions?
When it comes to social media metrics, there are so many things you CAN measure that creating meaningful metrics for your social media program can be overwhelming. The key is to focus on the important metrics that get you to your goal.
Avinash Kaushik, the analytics guru, detailed his thoughts on this subject a few months ago, but we think most concrete social media programs should measure these three big areas to determine the success of your social media efforts.
Conversation Rate
Engagement in social media measures how the public interacts with a brand or product’s social media presence. This is the measure that most traditional marketing folks don’t understand, don’t value, and don’t think is a real measurement goal at all. In 2012 we should put to rest any remaining quibbles over engagement as a meaningful measurement for social media. Good engagement is the essence of a quality of social media program. Conversion rate is way to measure consumer engagement with a brand through their social media posts. Every post is a chance to engage in conversation and every method a fan/follower chooses to interact should be weighted accordingly. A “like” on a Facebook post would be considered a low level of engagement and a meaningful comment, share, Re-Tweet with comment or blog link would be considered a high level of engagement. Your weighted score per post in all social networks is your conversation rate.
Other forms of high engagement are included but not limited to:
- Blog post comments
- Facebook comments
- Linkedin conversations
- Google+ conversations
- Youtube comments
- Twitter Re-Tweets with comments
Amplification Rate
The level of engagement a brand has with their audience directly influences the total reach and overall impressions. Here is where marketers usually get stuck on the number of fans or followers and measure the success of their social media programs on these stats alone. But for every fan on Facebook who “likes” your brand page, there are over 250 friends of that fan that are one step removed from becoming aware of your brand. What’s the once step? It’s some form of interaction or engagement by your brand’s fan that will show up on their friends’ walls. Put more plainly: If you want reach with every post, then maximize the engagement of your content.
Subscribers, pageviews, and bookmarking stats give you a good picture of blog content’s amplification rate. Facebook puts total reach numbers on their Insights pages and there are new tools out there to get the total reach from Re-Tweets on Twitter. All of these data points need to be added to your existing fan total stats and the overall picture of your amplification rate needs to be balanced against your conversation rate. Getting a bigger audience doesn’t matter if they aren’t engaging with your content on a regular basis. Odds are they are using you for the discounts, special offers, and contest spoils you were dangling their way to grow your fan base. Stop giving away your product for fans and start creating better content that delights, informs and engages those fans over time.
Additional means of measuring amplification rate include but are not limited to:
- Number of fans on Facebook
- Total reach of friends of fans on Facebook
- Digg references
- Stumbleupon references
- Twitter followers
- Potential audience of Re-Tweets
- Blog subscribers
- Unique pageviews of blog post
Conversion Rate
ROI measures the economic value social media offers a brand. This is the Holy Grail of social media measurements and for some reason it remains elusive to too many brands. To crack this mystery it’s time to take some advice from Avanish on what you are really measuring. It’s conversions. For web analytics not all conversions are sales, but they are all meaningful exchanges that need to be measured and understood in the big picture. We call micro-conversions, those things that lead us to deeper engagement with a company and lead to a sale. For the actual purchases, the thing we are really trying to influence, we use the term macro-conversions.
For starters, do you know your consumer’s path to purchase? Odds are there are many, but if you don’t know how a consumer who downloads a catalog from your website differs from a consumer who friends you on Facebook, you won’t know how to value each micro-conversion. To get this picture you will need to build CRM system that can help give you a picture of how the micro-conversions and other touchpoints in your marketing mix, including social media, create a path to purchase for your consumer. When you know this path, you will know how the conversion rates of each customer and whether Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google +, or LinkedIn is working as effectively as possible to deliver ROI.
Micro-conversions include but are not limited to:
- Whitepaper downloads
- Submit for information
- Catalog downloads
- Email newsletter sign-ups
- Facebook contest applications and registration for exclusive deals
- Submit information for contact
With Conversation, Amplification and Conversion Rates working together to create a coherent view of your social media program, your marketing team can know what which site is best for elevating brand awareness, which space creates richer interaction with consumers, and what eventually leads to an increase in sales.
Ways to Spark Better Thinking in Brainstorms
We always hope that creativity will hit the instant we start a brainstorming session and a revolutionary, big idea will emerge magically from some quiet corner of the room. Good luck. Doesn’t happen. There’s even some new research that shows a lot of what people have been doing in brainstorm sessions is short-circuiting your team’s creativity. Here’s how to get good ideas out of your team: Get the Culture Right Creating an atmosphere that encourages and inspires creative thinking is more important than any activity you can conjure up for a brainstorming session. Design Thinking guru and IDEO CEO and[.....]
Lindsay, Stone & Briggs new office space featured in Wisconsin State Journal
LSB’s new office space was the focus of the feature in the Wisconsin State Journal. LSB is moving their offices to an open-studio design to foster a more creative and collaborative environment. Read the feature here.
Lindsay, Stone & Briggs Takes Home Three Public Relations Awards
MADISON, Wis. – The Public Relations Society of America-Madison Chapter held their 10th annual Alchemy Awards on October 20, 2011, and presented Lindsay, Stone & Briggs (LSB) with one award of excellence and two awards of merit for its public relations work. The excellence award was given in the media relations category for work done for Michael Best & Friedrich. LSB’s campaign for Michael Best resulted in 17.4 million media impressions – over a 300% increase from the previous year. LSB won a merit award in the integrated communications category for work done for Jewelers Mutual, a jewelry insurance company[.....]
Launch Story: Esotika From Product Idea, to Key Insight, to Archetype
There are product categories that have gone years without innovation. And when I say years, I mean since Ben Franklin’s time. Take, for instance, reading glasses. It’s not like they’re things that people seldom use. Some of us, well, actually all of us, are facing the inevitable entropy called aging. So, while reading glasses are useful, they aren’t necessarily celebrated or loved. Sort of like vacuum cleaners, Pepto-Bismol or hearing aids. What’s new Ben Franklin? So when a new product came to us with something that innovates in this category, it got our attention. Todd Huschka had an idea:[.....]
Lindsay, Stone & Briggs names new VP and Director of Interactive
MADISON, Wis.-October 17, 2011-Lindsay, Stone & Briggs is proud to appoint Todd LaBeau as Vice-President and Director of Interactive, a move that further elevates the agency’s capabilities in the digital and interactive arena. “LaBeau’s e-commerce and internet marketing background makes him the ideal candidate to continue expanding the digital arm of LSB and raising the bar for world-class work,” said LSB President and COO, Phil Ouellette. LaBeau was previously Senior Director of Solution Consulting at Covario, the leading independent search engine optimization software and services agency based in San Diego, where he worked on top Internet Retailer and Fortune 500[.....]
Lindsay, Stone & Briggs Shares New Office Space Idea with Inc.com
Bill Winchester, the Chief Creative Officer at LSB, was recently quoted in an Inc.com article about the world’s coolest offices. LSB is moving their offices to an open-studio design to foster a more creative environment. Check out what Bill had to say here: Your Office Design is Killing Teamwork
“What the Hell, Let’s Try It!” – Time for the Next Gen of Integrated Marketing
Lindsay, Stone & Briggs CEO Marsha Lindsay discusses the framework for how to create a successful integrated marketing campaign in Vistage Connect. Read the full column: “What the Hell, Let’s Try It!” Time for the Next Generation of Integrated…
Missoni Impossible: Can a Launch be too Successful?
Ok I admit it, I was in line at my local Target Tuesday before they opened, praying I too would get my hands on a few choice pieces of Missoni merchandise. I am a self-proclaimed fashionista so this partnership between Target and Missoni was my opportunity to own a little piece of iconic fashion history. Little did I know that the pieces I was able to buy might now become valuable collector’s items. Calculated hysteria? Who can’t understand what’s in it for Target? Lagging sales to Walmart and a recession has everyone spending less but still wanting more. Target has[.....]
Off Target: The Difference between Branding and Retail Sameness at Target
What’s happened to Target? Well, a lot of their advertising has gone stupid-retail for one. Their broadcast has become a big ho-hum that carries very little branding, almost zero concept and this means the brand linkage to Target is completely dependent on three seconds of logo at the end of the spot. Advertising like this relies on consumers actually paying rapt attention–which they don’t–and is a formula that makes it easy for them to confuse Target with one of their competitors. For instance, check out this recent Target commercial for Champion sportswear: The problem with this[.....]