Monitoring and Measuring Social Media with Downstream Data

 

What do Facebook, LinkedIn, Groupon and Twitter all have in common?  They are part of the growing social network phenomena that is permanently changing the way the world communicates.   Facebook has gone so far as being an integral enabler of the revolutions in the Middle East. Most CGs already have a Facebook page that is used for basic brand awareness. But when they strategize on how they manage this page or expand it to an advertising program within Facebook, they should think about three questions.

 

1.       What is the profile of the end consumer?

2.       What does that consumer want?

3.       How is the effectiveness measured?

 

These are basic questions that every marketer typically asks with their marketing spend and are easily transferrable to the exploding social media trend. 

 

 

CGs should clearly identify the specifics of the consumer attributes they want to target. These attributes, such as age, gender, socioeconomic status, education and geography will be the building blocks of determining what ads are most relevant to your consumers and which vehicle of social media is most relevant. In comparison to traditional media, such as TV or radio, social media provides the opportunity to more finely pinpoint the targeted attributes for your campaigns.

 

 

Through social media, CGs are now able to tailor offers based on what the consumers tell them they want which is heavily compiled from their internet activity and subscription choices.  Providing the consumer with ads that are relevant to them helps build the trust level that is so important in this medium.  CGs can quickly understand that people buy from whom they know and trust. In this environment, CGs need to listen, learn and provide. Understanding this process will help CGs better focus on how to make their advertising more relevant in the consumers’ mind.

 

Social media has changed the way marketing is done. In addition to traditional marketing, CGs should understand that today’s consumer is empowered through a wealth of information. Pricing and product evaluations are just a key stroke away. People are making decisions on what their friends say as well as what manufacturers are telling them. Word of mouth is king and it is spreading faster than ever.

 

 

Is social media worth the time and effort? If one considers that Keith Urbahn tweeted to just 1,016 followers “So, I am told by a reputable person that they have killed Osama Bin Laden.” Then, in less than 30 minutes, this tweet snowballed into 5,100 tweets per second and coverage from the all major news networks.

 

 

If a new product can garner this this type of momentum, and spread “tweet by tweet,” CGs would quickly see that the impact could be enormous and the payback is definitely there.

 

When a CG evaluates social media payback, they should consider the concept of Return on Engagement (“ROE”). A current business baseline should be established and a process be put in place to track the sales lift over time, looking for correlations of business improvement, just as the CG would do for traditional media spends.

 

Consider a launch of a new wrinkle cream with test advertising in both the New York and Los Angeles markets. Using Facebook to run an ad, CGs can target just these markets along with a specific demographic profile (e.g. women over 40) that would possibly buy this product. Then, using the downstream data of the stores in both these markets, they can identify increases in shelf take away and see if these areas outperformed other areas of the country for this new item. Facebook can also specifically target general demographics, birthdays, education levels and even where people work. Through this targeted approach, CGs can optimize their ROE.

 

Along with Facebook, Groupon, Living Social and other couponing services are already available options for reaching a specific consumer base. Recently, General Mills launched a sampler pack through Groupon and sold out 500 as a test. This allowed them to put the product in hundreds of people’s hands, and in addition, pick up thousands of impressions.   As CGs move to the future, we may want to consider these advertising vehicles in their marketing mix and establish well-defined, quantifiable ROE measurements.  

 

Another great tie-in with these ads is the QR (Quick Response) code that can quickly link a consumer to a video or web page of the featured product. If a product manager ties this inexpensive technology to their social media planning, they could create a world where a QR code on a product drives a consumer to a web page that is then linked back to our Facebook advertising. This cycle has the potential of triggering the consumer to purchase a product with a QR code on it and the cycle then repeats.

 

As social media keeps evolving, CPGs should implement tracking capabilities with downstream data to monitor the ROE from these new social media outlets and make sure they are optimizing these retail insights as effectively as possible.