Creative agency blog
A blog written for a Brooklyn-based digital marketing agency.
Your Social Media Campaign Needs a North Star
Has your marketing run aground?
You already know that social platforms can quickly connect you with new and existing customers.
But do you use it wisely? Marketing through social media can be a murky journey. As social platforms update their algorithms or tinker with the unpaid visibility given to brands, earning that positive ROI is harder than ever. Just as you find your feet, the ground beneath you shifts again.
You’re not alone. Less than half of marketers admit to seeing ROI from social media. This could could reflect a failure to use the right platforms in the right ways, or confusion on how to measure the impact on business.
It’s easy to lose one’s way while using social media. Between follower counts, @mentions, publishing schedules, and shifting trends, the best path forward can seem tricky. Where should you spend your time, money, and energy?
See the Solution
Your social media campaign needs a north star to keep your team on the right course. A metric to help you determine the value to your customer and the impact on your bottom line. Are you solving a customer’s problem while also generating revenue? How do you know?
A north star guides your team through the journey of a campaign’s lifecycle. It offers a steady point of reference as you make the course corrections that’ll keep you on track. A north star metric:
Empowers your team with clarity and focus.
Demonstrates the campaign’s impact.
Holds the campaign accountable.
Weigh the Possibilities
Your campaign’s north star metric should be a leading indicator of future success. Lagging indicators like monthly revenue or blog traffic may record past success but won’t predict future revenue.
Examine your customer’s journey of retention and identify the actions that predict future success. Look at Facebook. To measure their own initial growth, the platform chose the key metric of “number of users adding seven friends in the first ten days.”
The current growth stage of your business may dictate the best north star. You could choose goals that would increase awareness of your brand. Or the breadth and/or depth of your audience engagement.
The best north star metric will align with all of your organization’s current marketing and business efforts. This keeps your team on track and avoids distractions that would muddy your campaign’s waters.
Make Your Choice
A campaign goal your executives will really care about is the conversion rate.
Conversions are actions a social media follower could make on a page (subscribe to your newsletter, begin a trial membership, download an app, etc.) after following a link from your post. To determine your conversion rate, divide the number of conversions by the page’s total visitors.
A high conversion rate means you’ve kept your promise to your social media follower—your post content was highly relevant to the offer made.
Know Your Landscape
A north star metric would be futile—and a campaign pointless— without a baseline. Map your current geography before setting off on your campaign’s journey. Take a good hard look at your current conversion rate.
Examine your traffic data to see which platforms your target audience prefers. One platform may drive less traffic than others, but deliver a higher percentage of repeat purchases, subscriptions, traffic, or downloads.
Once you’ve chosen a higher conversion rate as your north star, your team won’t waste time chasing higher follower counts or Twitter mentions.
Center Your Customer
A campaign’s north star should guide your team without blinding them to the importance of your customer’s experience. Use data analytics on core demographics. Get to know your customer before you craft the first word of your first post.
Offer high-quality content. Listen, respond, and track customer compliments and complaints. The old-school approach of acting like a human still works best.
With a north star guiding your campaign and your team, you can avoid the perils of fuzzy social media marketing. Hard data will prove to your leadership that investing in social can boost ROI. With the right north star, your campaign’s path will stay clear.