Setting KPIs is crucial to being able to measure how effective and successful a particular marketing activity or campaign is. You need a benchmark to measure success against, otherwise you could be starting, stopping or continuing a campaign with no real arguments or reason to support your decision.
KPIs can include:
- achieving x% engagement on posts
- converting fans to app purchases e.g. if we have 1000 fans, we want 5% to sign up for our app
- to acquire x new clients per month
At the most basic level you should set up a spreadsheet to record and then map/measure the results. You should also log clients (potential or existing) who have expressed an interest in your product/service but who’s interaction took place offline e.g. they emailed or phoned you.
For more detailed analysis you can use the various online analytic tools. For example ‘Google Analytics’ which can measure the user journey from your social media channels to your website’s enquiry form. In addition to Google, there are analytics applications within all the main social media platforms.
If one of your KPIs is linked to the number of quotation requests, ensure your sales staff are trained to ask customers how they heard about you. Include a field to this effect in your enquiry forms.
One great example of how to set KPI’s is HP UK. They set up a LinkedIn group to support small to medium sized businesses. Their objectives were twofold:
- Change the perception that businesses had of their company.
- Raise awareness of their products and services.
(You can read the full case study here).
The group wanted to measure KPIs that included:
- Creating a community of advocates
- Increasing recommendations of HP products
- Driving traffic to HPs other social media channels
And the result?
- As of July 2013, the group has grown to more than 9,000 members
- Group members were found to be twice as likely to rate HP as excellent at listening to customers
- Members were 20% more likely to recommend HP
- There were high levels of engagement in discussions with 75% of members repeatedly visiting the group and nearly a third regularly contributing comments
- The group resulted greater traffic across other social media channels
So, before you launch any campaign, decide on which factors are important to you and your business. What’s the intention behind your campaign? What do you want the campaign to achieve? Once you’ve figured this out, clearly set out your KPIs and pay particular attention to how you can measure the success of your campaign.
