How to measure social media marketing campaign results

Sales and marketing are often mentioned in the same phrase or are treated as one and the same function.  However, whereas sales calls upon a specific set of skills which are put to the test when trying to achieve a short term increase in sales figures, effective marketing sets the scene over the mid to long term, CREATING opportunities for sales activities to take place.

“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” – Robert Collier

 

For this reason, it is generally much easier to measure a sales campaign than it is a marketing one.  However, as mentioned in an earlier construction marketing post, your campaign plan should give clear objectives, and it is against these objectives that campaign results should be measured.

Generally accepted social marketing campaign measurement milestones include:

1.   Traffic

You may perhaps want to drive more traffic to your website using a variety of social media channels including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn

2.   Engagement

How engaged are your followers? Retweets, comments on blog posts  – all help to raise your profile and respect for you within your industry

3.   Sales/Enquiries

Yes, although marketing is used to assist the sales function, in many cases it can also directly bring in sales.  Make sure that all staff dealing with incoming calls are trained to ask where the enquirer or new customer heard about your construction firm

4.   SEO

Placing relevant items on a site such as StumbleUpon or sending out posts containing key words and phrases can often help to lift you through the Google rankings

Many construction companies unfortunately, are still undertaking social media marketing without really understanding why.   Indeed these tools are free to run but don’t forget they can be extremely time-intensive, so some kind of measurement above simply numbers of followers is imperative to ascertain whether your current activities are really delivering a good return on investment.