Social media marketing (SMM) is now a standard part of the marketing mix in the B2B world, but how do you measure its effectiveness? This article will show you how to develop the relevant metrics.

1. 3 Steps to More Effective Social Media Marketing
Metrics
This article discusses how to quickly and effectively develop relevant metrics to track and
measure the effectiveness of your B2B social media marketing activity.
OVERVIEW
Social media marketing (SMM) is now a standard part of the marketing mix in the B2B world.
Why? Because SMM offers marketers a way to connect, engage and interact with customers
and potential customers in a unique, personalized and immediate manner. Social media
marketing has low barriers to entry, is relatively quick and easy to learn and use, is easily
scalable, has the potential to reach a huge audience, and allows marketers to interact with
their audience in a more direct way than ever before.
In short, social media marketing sounds like a B2B marketer’s dream, but is it really? More
importantly, how can you prove that your social media marketing was effective and
accomplished what was required?
The answer is simple: prior to instituting a social media marketing program (either by itself or
as part of an integrated marketing strategy), you must decide which metrics you will track to
measure the results of your SMM.
WHY METRICS ARE IMPORTANT
In today’s business environment, marketing is expected to deliver more than just content and
marketing materials. Marketing is no longer viewed as primarily a support activity, but has

2. become integral to the growth and success of an organization and is expected to contribute
to the revenue stream. As such, it is expected to show not only a return on investment (ROI),
but also a direct correlation between how the level of marketing activity supports and
contributes to the business goals and objectives.
While traditional marketing activities have more clearly defined methods for tracking and
measuring their results, social media marketing does not. At least not to the degree that
other, more traditional marketing activities have. This makes it difficult to show a direct
correlation between SMM and a specific measurable outcome.
CHALLENGES IN MEASURING SMM
Measuring the results of social media marketing is difficult because there are no clear
methodologies or industry standards that have been defined and/or officially recognized. Due
to the many potential points of interaction and engagement that typically occur with a B2B
marketing campaign there is also not a clear way to tie one specific B2B social media
marketing activity to a specific revenue outcome. Some marketers may say that there are
some exceptions to this, such as one SMM activity that has one and only one outcome (ex:
respond to this tweet and get signed up on our mailing list), but that is just driving an
individual action, not a revenue result.
As stated earlier, you may count how many ‘clicks’, ‘likes’, ‘follows’, ‘shares’ or ‘re-tweets’ you
have, or how many people have visited your website, viewed your video or joined your group,
but what is the real value of those numbers?
Do those metrics reflect reach, engagement, conversion or advocacy? Do they show a direct
correlation between marketing and a purchase action? How do you translate those metrics
into something that relates back to your corporate revenue goal or shows the ROI of your
SMM? More critically, what are the “right” metrics to track?
Truthfully, those metrics do not provide much value, at least when they are presented as
standalone metrics out of context of an overall marketing strategy, which is how they are
often used. They are simply what are known as “activity” or “vanity” metrics and many
marketers use them to try and justify their activities without delving deeper to understand
what the real insights are or to assess how effective their marketing really was (or wasn’t).
The problem is that because social media marketing has become so easy to enter into and
use, marketers often make the mistake of assuming that using social media as part of the
B2B marketing mix means that it is also easy to track and measure. As such, they often don’t
take the time to develop a marketing plan specific to the social media channels that will be
used, they don’t determine how SMM will fit into the overall marketing mix, or determine how
to track and measure the results. That is a certain recipe for disaster.
THE 3-STEP PROCESS
To counter that problem, there is a very straight-forward three-step process to help develop
your social media marketing metrics. This simple process helps you define and understand
what you need to measure to show how your marketing supports the business goals and
objectives.

3. STEP 1 – KNOW YOUR BUSINESS
The first step in the process is to ensure you understand exactly what the specific business
goals and objectives are that need to be accomplished. This information may be given to you
as key performance indicators (KPIs), which are performance metrics linked to one or more
of the strategic goals or objectives and help translate execution into quantifiable results.
Too many marketing programs are conceived without understanding this information, leading
to results that are less than optimal. To ensure your social media marketing is in alignment
with and supports the business, it is critical to understand the goals and objectives.
For example, the business requirements may be to increase market share by xx%, increase
the customer base by yy% or increase revenue by zz%. These KPIs then drive the next level
of activity, which is determining what is required to make those KPIs happen. This involves
steps such as understanding how many new customer leads need to be generated,
determining the percentage increase in customer downloads of a new software package, or
calculating how many new sales appointments need to be scheduled.
Knowing this level of detail helps you in step 2 of the process.
STEP 2 – KNOW YOUR MARKETING
The second step is to know specifically at whom, or what level, marketing is targeting
(audience), what marketing needs to do (activities), what marketing needs to accomplish
(results) and why you want to use social media marketing (reach, engagement, conversion,
advocacy) as opposed to other, more traditional marketing activities and channels.
To ensure your social media marketing will reach your intended audience, you must
understand how each social media channel that will be used is unique and different from the
others. Each channel tends to have slightly different user profiles and typically allows people
to engage and interact in different ways. Understanding the unique aspects of each channel,
the membership, how it is used by people, what types of interaction occur there, the type(s)
of content that can be posted, etc. is critical to your decision-making process when evaluating
the use of SMM. Knowing the characteristics and parameters of the various social media
channels provides you with the knowledge to select the channel(s) most appropriate for your
marketing needs.
Knowing this information brings you to step 3.
STEP 3 – KNOW YOUR METRICS
The third step is to determine the metrics you will track and measure. Although throughout
the course of a B2B marketing campaign you may track a variety of metrics, at the end you
will typically only need to report on one to three high-level metrics that tie your overall
marketing results directly back to the business goals and objectives, so identifying and
developing the relevant metrics is critical. It is also important to note that there is not only one
set of metrics to use for every SMM activity or campaign, they will be different for each
activity, campaign or business goal.

4. To determine the “right” metrics for your specific situation, you need to be able to answer and
understand as many of the following questions that are relevant to your social media
marketing as possible. These questions help you drill down to ensure you are focusing on
and tracking the details that are important, helping to determine which metrics to use in your
social media marketing campaign.
The following list provides a representative sampling of the types of questions you need to
ask:
 Does your target audience use or communicate via social media?
 Do your competitors use social media?
o Which channel(s) are they using and why?
o What will you do better/differently to differentiate yourself?
 What exactly is it that you want to accomplish with SMM that you cannot accomplish
via other marketing activities/channels?
 What specific social media channels do you want to use?
 Why do you want to use those specific social media channels?
o You know your target audience uses those specific social media channels
o You have been asked by customers to use those social media channels
o You have seen your competition successfully use those social media channels
o Other
 Are those the right social media channels to use or are there others that might work
better in your specific situation?
 How exactly do you intend to use those social media channels?
 What are your expectations for your SMM?
 What type of content do you intend to post?
 How often do you intend to post to those channels?
 Will you post the same or different content to every channel?
 Which metrics are critical to your specific marketing goals and objectives?
 How do those metrics support the business goals and objectives?
 What KPIs do your SMM metrics need to tie back to?
 How exactly will you tie the metrics back to the corporate KPIs?
 Do you know which metrics reflect reach, engagement, conversion or advocacy?
SUMMARY
By following this three-step process and evaluating and answering the above questions, the
relevant metrics to use will become obvious. Defining these metrics at the beginning of the
marketing campaign development process ensures your social media marketing aligns with
and supports the business goals and objectives, thereby allowing you to prove the value of
social media marketing to the business.
NOTE: This article does not go into the specifics of what tools are available to help you measure your SMM,
how to manage your SMM or how to present your results. Those topics will be addressed in future articles.
© 2015, 2019 - Richard Hatheway, Catalyst Strategic Marketing
All rights reserved.