From volume to value
Julian Smith, group director, analytics and insight, MEC Global Solutions (London), on how improved techniques in measurement will help further move the discussion away from volume to value of social media…
In 2012 we expect to see a growing maturity in the adoption of social media among marketers and a greater emphasis on understanding the value created by engaging consumers at scale within social media platforms.
If, to date, marketers have been fixated with growing the sheer numbers of their fan base – versus the competition – then moving forward they will increasingly ask the question of what value do all those fans, followers and likes bring to their brand and business. New breakthroughs in measurement, as well as further growth of social commerce, will facilitate this shift.
As they look for more resource and investment in social media channels in 2012, marketers will be required to better understand how engaged online fans contribute to the bottom line and how they can be leveraged for further business growth. As marketers seek to maximise the impact of their social media activities, so the platform providers and third party research vendors seek to answer their ROI questions.
Facebook itself has evolved its audience insights platform to enable marketers to better understand how fan bases can influence wider audiences – raising brand awareness and engagement – by helping spread content organically. This deeper social graph analysis can now be supplemented by comScore’s Social Essentials online audience research data to better understand the ‘power of likes’.
Millward Brown Dynamic Logic now offers a FanIndex survey to provide deeper attitudinal insight into fan motivations, their expectations and resultant change in perceptions. And their sister Kantar agency, TNS is now launching F-Power research to better understand the value and commitment/loyalty of Facebook fans.
New start-ups are emerging such as Campalyst that provide social analytics to measure the revenues and conversions from Facebook pages for e-commerce retailers, and SocialCode that helps brands understand the monetary value of their fans.
For us, this shifting marketplace focus, from volume to value, will drive ever greater integration of Paid, Owned and Earned media performance data with brand health and sales data. Providing our clients a deeper understanding of their integrated and always-on online communications effectiveness.
See MEC’s full report here.