Defining the Contribution of Social at Your Organization

Transcription

1 Defining the Contribution of Social at Your Organization Exercise Guide

2 Defining the Contribution of Social at Your Organization We have talked to thousands of social marketers here at Simply Measured, and what do they all have in common? They have an innate drive to get better at social - to elevate their organization s social program and make a more meaningful impact on the business. There are four categorical challenges standing in the way of any striving social marketer: Optimizing for improved results Gaining the market insight required to find new strategy opportunities Justifying the value that social is driving for the organization Increasing workflow efficiency But there is only so much time in the day. If your ultimate goal is to get better at social, you must first determine which of these challenges take priority for you. To do this responsibly, you have to understand the impact of your social programs on your business as a whole. This means defining the contribution of social at your organization. In the eyes of many executives and senior stakeholders, the role of social as a channel may still be a bit ambiguous. But, with the right definition of the role of social media in the organization, social marketers should feel empowered to level-up their strategy and confidently define the contribution of their channel. A lot of the social marketers we ve spoken with provide this type of feedback: Yeah, I m down for all that; I m just not sure how to get this process off the ground. Defining the contribution of social at your organization may seem like a big challenge with an unclear first step, but through the application of a simple buyer s journey framework, any social marketer can make it happen. 2 simplymeasured.com

3 Creating Organizational Alignment Below is a step-by-step guide for defining the contribution of social at your organization through the lens of the buyer s journey. Before we jump in, here s a little context for this exercise. The concept of a buyer s journey spans all industries, from B2B to B2C, whether you sell products, services, or a combination of both. This simple purchase funnel is a fundamental element of marketing strategy that s applicable across most industries. Brand Awareness Consideration New Business Existing Business Decision Customer Success Influencers/Advocates Your organization may use a variation, represented in a different way or with different nomenclature, but you should be able to easily adopt the concepts to the consumer journey utilized by your organization. The goal of this exercise is to define social s contribution by aligning where the social team perceives itself contributing and where the leadership team expects social to contribute. Success in this exercise means an agreed-upon documentation of the contribution of social across stakeholders and mutual accountability for the results (social team) and resources (leadership) required to drive toward the agreed-upon business impact. One final note: As you go through this exercise, be mindful that the way you define social s contribution will need to be as agile as your business itself. New product launches, new campaign strategies, and competitive market shifts are just a few ways that the contribution of social will change alongside your business as a whole. 3 simplymeasured.com

4 Exercise #1 - Find Out Where You Stand With Your Social Team Take a look at the buyer s journey and indicate where you believe social CURRENTLY contributes the most. Brand Awareness Here? Consideration Decision Here? New Business Existing Business Customer Success Influencers/Advocates Here? Indicate where you believe social has the most POTENTIAL to contribute. Based on your assessment of current and potential points of contribution, pick which points in your buyer s journey you believe social should be held accountable for contributing. You may be tempted to say, Social contributes to every point in the buyer s journey. There may be some instances where that is the case, but the purpose of this exercise is to identify specific ways in which social should be accountable for contributing. Social in general has the ability to impact every area, but your social program likely will only be focused on specific points in the context of your current strategy. 4 simplymeasured.com

5 With Your Leadership Ask your leadership to complete steps 1-3 above, so that you can understand their perception of where and how social sits in your organization. If you have a difficult time engaging with your leadership, think about what types of questions they have asked you in the past to gauge success. How many people did you reach? - Your leadership is likely thinking about social as a way to drive Brand Awareness. How many times did you post last month? - Your leadership believes social should be contributing at the Consideration stage of the buyer s journey. How many sales did social drive? - Your leadership is probably looking for social to contribute at the Decision stage. How quickly did you respond to comments? - Leadership sees you as a contributor to Customer Success. How well did you engage with influencers and current customers? - Your leadership is wondering how social can contribute to the Influencers/Advocates stage. Exercise #2 - Ensure Alignment With Your Social Team Assess where your team and the leadership are aligned and where you are misaligned. Create a proposal including: Where social should be expected to contribute within the strategy on which the business is currently focused. How success should be defined at each point in the buyer s journey which you are proposing social should be held accountable for contributing. How performance will be communicated for its contribution at each stage of the buyer s journey. With Your Leadership Share your proposal and ensure alignment for where social will be held accountable for contributing in the context of the business s current strategy, how success is defined, and how leadership can expect to have performance communicated across stakeholders. 5 simplymeasured.com

6 Exercise #3 - Put the Pieces Together This exercise rests on the shoulders of your social team. You will: Research the market to find opportunities for growth, benchmark your current social performance, and design a plan for driving value at the agreed upon points in the buyer s journey. Execute (publish your content). Measure your performance and conduct ongoing optimizations to drive better results toward your buyer s journey. Leverage your measurement process to create concise reports that communicate the contribution of social to the target points in the buyer s journey. Ladder up the tactical level metrics that your team focuses on day-in and day-out into categorical performance KPIs. For example, rather than reporting a metric on follower growth, think about follower growth as one metric part of the categorical measurement of reach. What is the composition of that audience accumulated? How does it look holistically across channels? RESEARCH EXECUTE MEASURE 6 simplymeasured.com

7 An Example Framework Here is an example of how to outline the contribution of social at your organization based on each area of the buyer s journey. Where Social Is Expected to Contribute Brand Awareness - Getting people interested in your brand. Consideration - Educating people on the benefits of your product/service and why it makes sense to invest. Decision - Getting people to convert into a purchase, a lead, or whatever your organization attributes to digital customer acquisition. Customer Success - Supporting your customer base by answering questions and handling concerns. Influencers/Advocates - Engaging with people who are loyal to your brand and willing to promote your organization. How Success Is Defined at Each Stage Brand Awareness - Get more of the right people into your buyer s journey. Consideration - Get people who are aware of your product and brand to consider purchasing your product/service. Decision - Get people who are mulling over the purchase decision to pull the trigger. In some attribution scenarios, get people to take action attributable to the trigger being pulled. Customer Success - Turn people who are reaching out with questions or concerns into loyal advocates of the brand. Influencers/Advocates - Identify your most loyal and influential brand advocates and leverage them to reach new audiences, further filling your funnel. 7 simplymeasured.com

8 How Categorical Performance Is Communicated at Each Stage Brand Awareness - Audience growth across channels and composition of audience reached. Consideration - Engagement by content intent (promotion/offer, lifestyle) and types of engagements amongst current audience base. Decision - Downstream website performance referred from social and goal completions. Customer Success - Response times and number of posts required to resolve issues. Influencers/Advocates - Earned influencer reach and positive sentiment within existing audience. Doing better social at your organization is founded on your ability to show performance toward business level objectives across the buyer s journey. We hope you find this to be a simple and fresh approach to defining the contribution of social at your organization. 8 simplymeasured.com

9 ABOUT SIMPLY MEASURED Simply Measured is the most complete social analytics solution, empowering marketers to more clearly define their social strategy and to optimize their tactics for maximum impact. Our goal is to put the tools to understand business data in the hands of business users. We think reporting should be simple, attractive, and accessible for everyone not just data scientists. Our software streamlines the process from data to deliverables and eliminates the countless hours spent on everyday reporting tasks. We do this by putting cloud data sources at your fingertips, providing a marketplace of best practice reports, and allowing you to generate beautiful solutions on the web, in Excel, and in PowerPoint with a couple of clicks. Want to try Simply Measured? Request a Free Trial Today Copyright Simply Measured, Inc. All Rights Reserved.