Evaluating the effectiveness of using social networks. What KPIs are used in SMM

In February, we published an article "Analysis of indicators to track the effectiveness of Internet marketing." The readers liked the material and demanded more.

You asked - we did: we tried to collect all the most important indicators for the analysis of social media marketing. The information is useful for SMS, executives and business owners.

A warning to customers: do not go to extremes, evaluating SMM either by one indicator or by all at once. In the first case, a separately taken metric shows a distorted picture and is easily screwed up by an unscrupulous performer. The second method of assessment takes too much time and effort.

Metrics for assessing the dynamics of subscribers

Let's start with metrics that reflect the dynamics of subscribers and, therefore, the effectiveness of the SMM strategy in general.

• Followers

Perhaps the most famous metric in SMM: it is widely used in reports, set as a KPI. Of course, you can cheat followers, but such cheats are easy to calculate.

If there are suspicions, it is necessary to examine the accounts of newcomers - bots and "dogs" are immediately visible. In parallel, it is worth comparing the geography, age and other important data of new subscribers with the portraits of the target audience. The characteristics differ greatly - questions to the SMS man.

For more information on the independent search for bots in social networks and services for determining fake accounts, see the article by Dmitry Dementiy.

Formula: (number of new subscribers / total number of subscribers) * 100%.

The formula can also be improved by substituting in the numerator net gain: the difference between the number of new subscribers and the number of those who left the community. This will make it easier to gauge audience interest, post relevance, and ad performance if enabled.

• Views

For reports, as a rule, a cumulative indicator is used: the number of views for all posts in the community for a certain period.

• Reach

Reach shows the number of people who have had contact with the community's post (s) at least once.

As with the previous indicator, customers are generally reported on total coverage. It is considered separately if there is an intermediate task: to compare the effectiveness of several posts.

Viral coverage directly depends on the interest in the content, paid reach- from the advertising budget. On organic reach the number of subscribers and the frequency of content publication influences, but there is also an irresistible force - the ranking algorithms in social networks.

If KPI's are limited by subscriber and posting dynamics, Peakfeed is a good choice for tracking. He knows how to work with 8 social networks (VK and OK, however, are not included in the list). Cost - from $ 5 per month.

When tracking most of the important metrics - subscribers, reach, views, and engagement metrics (discussed in the next section) - Livedune can do better. Tariffs start at 195 rubles. Livedun knows how to work with all Russian social networks and even with LiveJournal.

Metrics for assessing audience feedback

Now about the metrics that reflect different user reactions. Likes, comments, shares or shares- the simplest, well-known, but not the only indicators for assessing audience feedback.

• Love Rate

Likes per audience size. Formula: Likes / Followers * 100%.

• Talk Rate

Comments based on audience size. Formula: Comments / Followers * 100%.

• Amplification Rate

A synonym is a growth rate. Formula: Shares / Posts (number of posts) * 100%.

AR characterizes content virality. The higher the score, the greater the free reach and the cheaper it is to acquire subscribers.

Sometimes likes, shares, comments and coefficients for them are not counted separately, but a more general indicator is taken - the engagement volume. Formula: Likes + Comments + Shares.

• Audience Engagement Rate (ER)

There are several ER formulas.

One of the calculation options: take the number of community members who have made at least one engagement (like / repost / comment), then divide it by the total number of followers.

There is also such a formula: (sum of all engagement / number of subscribers) * 100%.

Advice to specialists from Daria Samoilova, SMM-manager of Netology: “If you are accountable for the growth of subscribers, try to show it in conjunction with ER. Because the best guarantee of the absence of bots and "dead souls" is growing or at least not falling engagement in the account. It is important".

The disadvantage of this indicator is that it is subjective: it does not take into account reach, engagement on specific days, and interaction with individual posts. Therefore, experienced SMS users use several subtypes of ER.

• Engagement Rate by Reach (ERR)

Formula: (number of engagement / reach) * 100%.

The metric shows the approximate share of those who saw the community publications and, in one way or another, reacted to them.

• Daily Engagement Rate (ER Day)

Formula: (number of impressions per day / number of subscribers) * 100%.

Daily engagement shows how many times a day the average subscriber was active.

• Engagement Rate of Post (ER Post)

Formula: (amount of engagement per post / number of subscribers on the date of publication) * 100%.

The indicator allows you to assess interest in specific publications, compare posts with each other in terms of effectiveness.

• Engagement Rate by Views (ER View)

Formula: (number of engagements per post / number of views) * 100%.

One must be careful with conclusions on this indicator, because social networks do not count unique views.

• Average response time (Response Time)

The metric reflects the time it takes for the community administration / brand representatives to respond to messages from the audience. This is an important indicator of the quality of service, respect for customers.

To estimate the average response time in dynamics, you can use the following formula: (response time for the previous period / response time for the reporting period - 1) * 100%.

• Response Rate

The metric shows the proportion of questions that users received an answer to. Formula: (number of answers / number of questions) * 100%.

According to JagaJam data collected in Russia, brands are slow to respond and do not even answer half of the questions.

Conclusion: with the help of quality service, you can overtake most of the competitors.

For regular monitoring of the responsiveness, the same JagaJam is suitable. It can collect statistics on both your brand community and competitor groups. In addition to the response rate, the service is able to calculate the dynamics of subscribers, engagement and other important SMM indicators. Personal tariff plan in JagaJam - 2,700 rubles per month.

There is also a foreign service for improving the quality of customer service in social networks - CX Social. He monitors publications with a mention of the brand and notifies them in time. Rates are unknown, but a demo can be requested.

Metrics for measuring traffic and conversions

The metrics from the previous sections are mainly about the inner workings of SMM. Business is interested in sales. We will tell you how you can evaluate the efforts of the SMS user to bring the audience to the purchase.

Important: you cannot set KPIs for sales, as they are influenced by many other factors that do not depend on SMM.

Leah Kanarskaya, a remote SMM manager, says: “Very often you can hear the following from potential clients:

• "Will there be a hundred thousand profit from ten thousand?"
• "Do you guarantee plus 1,000 subscribers?"
• "We will pay you a percentage of the sales."

But SMM affects sales and profits only indirectly. Social media does not create consumer needs, it is just one of the brand's communication channels. "

• Traffic from social networks (Social Traffic).

It is definitely not worth setting strict requirements for traffic to the site for the SMS user in the first 2-3 months after the creation of the community. Keep in mind that building trusting relationships takes time: new subscribers are in no hurry to click on links to unfamiliar sites.

• The conversion rate or click-through rate (CTR).

A basic metric in internet marketing, it is used at almost all stages of the sales funnel.

CTR in SMM can be considered as follows: divide the number of clicks on the link by the number of post impressions, and multiply the result by 100%. If the site is being promoted by targeted ads, click-through rates are calculated in the same way: ad impressions are simply substituted into the denominator.

• Cost Per Click (CPC).

This indicator is known to everyone who has set up targeted or contextual advertising at least once. However, CPC can also be calculated for general SMM according to the following formula: all the costs of maintaining social networks / the number of visits to the site.

• The number of leads (Leads).

The metric shows the number of contacts of potential customers, that is, the number of requests / orders / calls received using social networks.

• Cost Per Lead (CPL).

Formula: (amount of expenses / number of leads).

Leads and CPL are easy to calculate when managers process applications using social media apps. Try to offer potential customers a maximum of options for ordering: not everyone is comfortable filling out forms on landing pages, putting goods in the shopping carts of online stores.

Once again, let's touch on the topic of the number of KPIs.

Daria Samoilova, SMM-manager of Netology, spoke about her experience especially for Texterra:

“For me personally, 5 metrics are optimal: traffic to the site, conversion to leads, growth of subscribers, reach, Engagement Rate. This is a necessary foundation from which the efficiency of work can be seen without further ado.

Someone adds to the ER a breakdown by communication, gain, engagement indices - that is, they count comments, reposts, and likes separately. Then there can be eight metrics. "

• Term of work.
• The number of community members (as of the date of the report generation).
• Growth of subscribers in 1 month.
• Full audience coverage.
• The number of unique visitors.
• The total number of post views.
• The number of posts (messages).
• Frequency of news updates.
• Top 5 Popular Posts (by Reach).

Today, the popularity of social marketing among modern companies is growing steadily. However, checking the quality and effectiveness of social media can be challenging. A marketer working in the field of SMM will primarily operate with highly specialized concepts, for example, "consumer loyalty" or "brand growth". At the same time, you can always use simpler and more accessible methods of assessing efficiency.

Key performance evaluation criteria social media promotion

There are several criteria that are traditionally used to determine the effectiveness of the work done in social marketing. The most important ones are presented below.

Number of subscribers in communities and groups

By controlling the number of new participants, you can easily determine how correctly the promotion strategy in social networks was chosen. If a group or community has a systematic increase in the number of subscribers, this is the best indicator of quality content work.

However, it makes sense to consider this assessment criterion only in conjunction with others. There is a possibility that, despite the growing number of users, their activity may be minimal. Most often, the reason for such phenomena is low-quality content or a large percentage of non-target audience of the total number of subscribers.

Sometimes, in order to increase the number of subscribers, markelogs are engaged in cheating subscribers. This does not bring almost any positive result, since most of these participants are robots, the information does not reach the target users. Determining such unfair work is quite simple: just look at the number of remote users among subscribers. If there are too many of them (about 15% of all), then, most likely, such a cheat has taken place.

Number transitions between the site and group

If the number of transitions from the site to groups has increased, then we can talk about an increase in the level of trust and loyalty from customers. Most often, they themselves are engaged in the dissemination of information and advertising of the brand: they leave reviews, save news on the page and share them with their friends who might be interested.

The results from the work done are not immediately visible. It will take time for a new group or community to develop and find its subscribers, as well as increase user loyalty. Despite this, the number of transitions is the most telling sign of good group performance.

For quick promotion and growth of audience coverage, marketing techniques such as a contest or a flashy SMM advertising campaign can help. It is necessary to negotiate an approximate timeframe with a social marketing specialist: when will the chosen technique start to show results?

Also, the number of transitions to a resource is not always directly proportional to the increase in sales. If customers, having visited the site, did not make any purchases, then most likely the problem is in the site, and the group or community is working effectively at the same time.

It is important to remember that social media is a long way to acquire a customer. The costs will pay off only after a certain period, so the absence of transitions to the web resource at the beginning will mean absolutely nothing. A social media campaign is a long-term perspective.

User activity on social resources

The constant activity of users in the group perfectly demonstrates how interesting and useful content is provided. Subscribers like photos, comment on posts and spread information by making reposts.

However, activity in itself is not a guarantee of a result. Subscribers may be attracted by side content, such as flashy pictures or philosophical statements. In this case, information about the product does not reach the consumer and the key task is not fulfilled.

Thus, the engagement indicator is just an accompanying attribute of good work on SMM promotion, but at the same time it does not guarantee 100% efficiency, and calculating the average number of likes and reposts is like finding the average temperature in a hospital.

Studying the activity on the site, you can come across the aforementioned cheating of votes - with a simple and cheap way to get a lot of likes and reposts. However, such activity will not help in any way in acquiring new customers. Established companies do not allow themselves to do this kind of thing, but newcomers can use this method of creating the appearance of activity in the group. You can check the presence of such a "cheat" only by personally checking the contingent of visitors who like news and photos.

It is also very important to occasionally look into competitor groups and compare the activity in their groups with your own.

Activities for group promotion and their impact on all indicators

A competition with interesting prizes will attract a large number of "freeloaders" to the group. The number of subscribers and their activity will increase dramatically. However, a large percentage of new users will leave the group at the end of the competition, or simply will not visit it anymore. At the same time, if the group is well thought out and filled with interesting content, many can stay.

If the tender method has been chosen, it will be necessary to pre-insure against conflicts with participants. Many losers will not be able to come to terms with the victory of the other and will present a lot of claims to the organizers. To avoid this, it is enough from the very beginning to think over all the details of the competition and familiarize the participants with them. The rules should mention penalties for those who "cheat" and ways to resolve controversial issues. And in order to attract potential customers, the prize must directly relate to the group's theme.

The cost of each new member

Every new visitor to social media should be cheaper. The group develops correctly only if the audience is constantly growing, but at the same time the financial costs for each individual subscriber decrease. It depends on the quality of the content and its relevance to the needs of the audience. The content manager must understand the subscribers, otherwise such a result will not be achieved.

At a certain point, the cost of a new member stops falling. Before that, a rapid fall could have been observed, but it began to slow down, and after that it completely stopped. This means that the best indicator has been achieved and it will not decrease more. However, if this happened too quickly, it is important to analyze the situation. Perhaps the reason is the poor quality work of the SMM manager.

Interactive communication with clients

Despite the fact that there are no definitive estimates of audience engagement, this criterion is very easy to test for yourself. It is enough just to systematically enter the group and check the availability of answers to questions from the community administration, as well as the presence of a reaction to criticism and negative reviews.

All metrics in Social Media Marketing can be divided into two broad groups: base metrics (these are the well-known likes, reposts, views, comments and subscribers) and their derivatives. The role of the latter is extremely important, as they help to assess the dynamics of changes in quantitative characteristics that determine the popularity of the community, and therefore to understand how effective certain marketing activities and work with the community have been. In this article, we will try to consider all the most commonly used KPIs, for convenience, we will divide the material into several thematic sections.

Evaluating the effectiveness of SMM in terms of attracting target audience

The global goal of a marketing campaign is to attract as many potential customers as possible. Therefore, to begin with, let's consider the indicators reflecting the dynamics of the growth of the subscription base.

Number of subscribers

The most obvious KPI in SMM used by professionals of any level. However, for its reliable determination, it is necessary to separate the grain from the chaff, that is, the bots from real people. This is important for the simple reason that the presence of such subscribers negatively affects other performance indicators and complicates the calculations, since they do not repost, do not like and do not participate in discussions. Please note that fake accounts can subscribe to you even if you have never resorted to cheating: this is how spammers act, trying to publish a link to their resource in the comments at every convenient opportunity. It is quite easy to identify a fake based on the following criteria:

● Absence of original photos - photos of celebrities or neutral pictures are used as an avatar and filling of a photo album;
● Personal data is not specified - profession, place of study and work, presence of relatives, etc. A living person will at least outline a circle of interests;
● The use of a nickname instead of a real name - historically, the regulars of social networks add nicknames to their real names, but do not hide their real names;
● Spam wall - replete with re-posts, often unrelated to each other, and the original entries are openly advertising in nature;
● The number of friends is measured in thousands - this is typical for public figures, but not for ordinary users.

Only after weeding out the fakes (manually or using automated applications), you can proceed to further calculations.

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Number of unsubscriptions

This metric helps to understand how effective the posted content is in terms of SMM, as well as the work of the community manager with the target audience. Unfortunately, not every social network allows you to measure the number of unsubscribed users. For example, if the “Unfollows” item is present in the built-in Facebook statistics, then on VKontakte you will have to use a special web application “Deserter”. On Instagram, you won't be able to reliably measure this indicator at all, since the site administrators have disabled the API for third-party software.

Audience growth dynamics

Calculated by the formula:

(net gain / total subscribers) * 100%

Here, net growth is the difference between the number of new subscribers and the number of people who left the community over a certain period of time. Allows you to evaluate the relevance of the published content and the effectiveness of targeted advertising, if any.

Number of views

Comments are superfluous. For all its simplicity, this is one of the least accurate metrics, as social media captures non-unique views. That is, if one user opens the post 5 times, the counter will show 5 views.

Coverage

This SMM performance indicator shows how many people have contacted the posted content at least once, and only unique visitors are taken into account during the calculations. The overall reach can be segmented into three types:

● organic (natural) - the number of unique views received from subscribers of the group or public;
● advertising (commercial) - the number of clicks originating from ads or paid posts;
● viral - the number of displays of content to users who are not subscribers (obtained using reposts or direct links).

Each of the three metrics is determined by very specific factors. The amount of organic reach depends on the volume of the subscription base and the frequency of publications, advertising - on your financial capabilities and targeting accuracy, and virality - on the quality and thematicity of the content. Sounds simple, right? Everything would be even clearer if it were not for the ranking algorithms of social networks, but this is a topic for a separate conversation.

KPIs in SMM for assessing interaction with subscribers

If your publications are read, that's half the battle. It is much more important to get feedback from users. The three basic metrics we are interested in are likes, comments, and reposts. They can be easily calculated using the Analytics tool included in SmmBox - provide a link to the community and the system will display statistical data accurate to a specific day (depending on the options selected).

However, the list of metrics is not limited to those listed above. Let's figure it out.

Attractiveness

Shows how many people from among your subscribers liked the posted content. It is calculated by the formula:

(likes / subscribers) * 100%

Sociability level

(comments / followers) * 100%

Growth rate

Numerical characteristics of content virality. The higher this indicator, the more effective your content marketing and, as a result, the cheaper it costs new subscribers. It is considered as follows:

(reposts / posts) * 100%

Engagement volume

Allows you to assess the overall level of interaction with the target audience. Expression:

([likes + reposts + comments] / subscribers) * 100%

UGC gain

(UGC / total number of publications) * 100%

Engagement rate

We have already considered this indicator of the effectiveness of SMM in the article devoted to. Recall that Engagement Rate has several subspecies:

● Total ER - (the number of subscribers involved / the volume of the subscriber base) * 100, shows which of the users, in principle, is inclined to interact with the content;
● ER per day - (number of engagement per day / number of subscribers) * 100%, with its help you can calculate the average daily activity of the community;
● ER per post - (number of engagement per post / number of subscribers at the time of posting) * 100%, allows you to assess people's interest in a particular post;
● ER by views - (engagement per post / number of views) * 100%, similar to the previous one, but less accurate, since social networks do not keep track of unique views;
● ER by reach - (total number of engagement / total reach) * 100%, helps to understand how many readers have responded to the post in one way or another.

When assessing the effectiveness of SMM, you need to monitor not only the actions of users, but also your own. After all, the best way to increase brand loyalty of subscribers is to closely interact with them: communicate, answer questions and provide timely support directly on social networks. To control ourselves, the following indicators will help us:

Average response time

The speed of the administration's reaction to messages from users is determined. VKontakte and Facebook calculate this value automatically by displaying a corresponding notification in the community chat interface.

To estimate the dynamics of changes in the average response time (in minutes) for the reporting period, you can use the following expression:

(response time for the previous period / response time for the current period - 1) * 100%

Response rate

As the name suggests, the ratio shows how many questions users received answers to in principle:

(number of answers) / (number of questions) * 100%

I burn the chip: according to the analytical service JagaJam, Russian enterprises that have offices in social networks do not answer even half of the users' questions. And the worst of all is on Google+, and YouTube is the record holder - here you can get an answer in 40% of cases.

Frequency of brands' responses to questions from subscribers on Runet social networks:

Thus, having only one efficient support team will give you a significant competitive advantage.

SMM and conversion counting

Reach, reactions, and engagement are good things, of course. However, business is primarily interested in the number of sales. The most common question a client asks is, "How many buyers will I get on the way out?" And this is the main mistake: social networks must be considered as another channel of communication, as well as an image asset - SMM affects sales indirectly. But you will never be able to convey this simple truth to the customer, therefore, one way or another, you will have to use a number of classic KPIs typical for SEO and contextual advertising.

Volume of attracted traffic

Counting the number of users who came to the target site from social networks is not difficult: it can be implemented using Yandex.Metrica, Google Analytics and UTM tags. When working with SmmBox, everything becomes even easier, since for each URL passed through our short link generator, individual statistics are kept, which allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of literally every post.

However, one should not wait for an influx of visitors to the site earlier than 2-3 months after the start of active promotion of the community. Firstly, people, in principle, are extremely reluctant to leave social networks, and secondly, new subscribers will not switch to third-party resources until they get to know the company better and make sure that the links do not lead to a phishing resource.

Leads and CPL

The number of leads (that is, people who are ready to interact with the brand and have completed the target action) is easiest to calculate if the collection of orders is carried out directly in the community. In this regard, VKontakte has practically no competitors - the site offers many widgets for accepting applications, which can be accessed through "Management" -> "Applications".

The built-in functionality of the online store also demonstrates good results. We recommend not to be lazy and transfer the entire product catalog to the community - this way you can attract the attention of those who do not want to bother registering on third-party resources, which means that you can reduce Cost Per Lead. As for this indicator, it is calculated according to the classic formula:

(total cost of promotion) / (number of leads)

Here you should consider not only the net advertising budget, but also the costs of creating viral content, paid posts in related communities, fees for bloggers who talk about your community, etc.

Cost per click (CPC)

It is used to assess the profitability of contextual advertising, but it can also be used in the field of SMM. The formula will look like this:

However, a more appropriate metric is the cost of followers. To find out, it is enough to substitute the number of new subscribers in the denominator. Considering how reluctant social media users are to click on external links, this is the most sensible approach.

To count or not to count?

If your eyes are already running wild from the abundance of metrics and terms, I hasten to reassure you: although the list of SMM performance indicators is not limited to the above, you do not need to use all of them in your work. The best option is to choose the 5-10 most suitable ones, starting from the assigned tasks, otherwise the lion's share of the working time will have to be spent on tables and formulas. To make it easier for you to navigate, here is the standard structure of the report used in most marketing agencies.

Report of an SMM specialist at the end of the calendar month:

Such a report can be supplemented and modified depending on the specifics of the site. For example, for Pinterest, the number of repins is important, because many of its users perceive the photo on their board as an idea for a future purchase, and this indicator allows us to estimate the share of the hot audience at the end of the sales funnel. When working on VKontakte, one should take into account the number of subscriptions to the mailing list through a special widget - this will help to identify the most loyal users.

In any case, when working with KPIs, you need to remember: even the best SMM specialist will not tell you exactly what target values ​​you need to achieve. The optimal numbers depend on many factors, including the topic, the nature of the target audience, the region (if geo-referencing takes place) and many others, not to mention the constantly changing algorithms for ranking social networks. With this in mind, the most optimal approach was and remains the analysis of competitors. By comparing this data with the results of your peers in the industry, you can reliably assess how justified your digital marketing efforts are.

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Today it is almost impossible to find a person who is not registered in one or more social networks. That is why SMM promotion is becoming a full-fledged marketing method. The effectiveness of advertising on social networks cannot be ignored, losing the opportunity to use this tool, because it is on Odnoklassniki, Facebook, VKontakte, Twitter, etc. is a significant part of the target audience of your business.

Why it is necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of advertising on social networks

Planning the marketing activities of a company is impossible without the direct involvement of the management, which determines the course of business development. When developing a strategy, market indicators are taken into account, on the basis of which it is possible to build a forecast of the dynamics of consumer preferences. They can be conventionally called indicators. Data for evaluation can be obtained, including in social networks, in which advertising of your brand or product helps to see changes in the characteristics of the target audience (demographics, age, location, preferences, interests, etc.).

Each of these indicators is able to answer important questions for the marketing strategy and business as a whole:

Metrics such as budget, resources, timelines, products, and processes can be quantitative or qualitative in terms of how social media users interact with your brand. In addition, they can be optimized and adjusted to improve the effectiveness of social media ads. In the long term, improved performance could lead to a more profitable allocation of social media investment.

Latest Research on Social Media Advertising Effectiveness

The Content Marketing Institute teamed up with MarketingProfs to organize a survey, which was attended by 3,714 marketers from around the world. Content was chosen as the research topic, as well as Internet marketing success. Despite the fact that only 263 respondents are B2C marketers and business owners, the survey results were considered indicative.

Sponsored posts (for example, posts on Facebook or Twitter and Pinterest) are used by 76% of B2C marketers. 61% of them confirmed the effectiveness of this type of advertising on social networks, the effectiveness of which was rated at 4 or 5 points on a five-point scale (3 demonstrates a neutral attitude).

Advertising on social networks itself received an assessment of 4 or 5 points on a scale of effectiveness among 59% of respondents (this method of promotion is used by 74% of all respondents). Facebook was recognized as the most successful platform for promotion, followed by Youtube.

Effectiveness of social platforms for B2C:

Most of the respondents who took part in the CMI survey belong to the B2B sphere (1521 people). Of these, 93% use advertising on social networks: 52% - advertising posts, 41% - direct advertising. 48% of marketers rated these tactics 4 points on a 5-point scale of effectiveness, 45% - 5 points.

However, 55% of B2B professionals rated above average (4 or 5) paid search ads, as well as PPC (Pay-Per-Click). And only 29% of respondents consider traditional banner advertising to be efficient enough or super effective.

Effectiveness of social platforms for B2B:

What are the indicators for evaluating the effectiveness of advertising on social networks?

Users of social networks are in part attracted by metrics that allow you to see how many subscribers your community or channel has, how many comments, likes and reposts your content has. Business owners should also pay attention to these indicators in order to measure them and evaluate the opening advertising effectiveness for the company.

Audience

Entrepreneurs expect their target audience to be aware of their brand and the services they offer. This awareness can be measured using the following criteria:

1. The number of subscribers, that is, those people who are in your community on the social network and regularly receive newsletters about content updates.
2. Audience growth dynamics showing an increase or decrease in the number of subscribers over a certain period of time.

Awareness represents the top of the sales funnel. Here are such incentives of customers as the urge to realize the need, the desire to satisfy their needs and loyalty to the company.

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Coverage

The reach indicator reflects how many users from the total audience of the social network have viewed your content, including paid advertising. This indicator can be applied both to an individual post and to the entire page. With its help, you can evaluate the effectiveness of advertising impact on the target audience.

Involvement

There are 4 main ways of interacting with the audience using social networks. They measure the reaction of the audience.

1. Likes, with which you can see the number of users who have viewed and rated your content.
2. Comments that demonstrate the effectiveness of your content in encouraging users to engage in dialogue.
3. Reposts reflecting the increased interest of the audience, who considered your content relevant for placement on their pages, as well as for further distribution.
4. Mentions showing how many times your brand name is quoted during user interactions.

The more active the audience is, the higher the effectiveness of advertising in social networks. The engagement indicator helps you gauge the degree to which users are interested in your content. Thanks to this, the loyalty of the audience grows, which in the future can lead to an increase in sales.

Social mood

This indicator is one of the most revealing. By researching social mood, you get the opportunity to gauge the attitude of users towards your company and find out what is being said about your brand.

The difficulty lies in the fact that in the process of communication, social media users can mention your brand without directly addressing it. To understand in what context the audience is talking about your company - in a positive or negative way, specialized services are involved, which are used by marketers to evaluate. Sentiment analysis of reviews is carried out based on the specified key parameters. The higher the percentage of mentions of your brand on social media, the higher the effectiveness of your social media ads. In addition, by measuring social mood, you get the opportunity to quickly respond to criticism and adjust your strategy to avoid the appearance of negativity in the future.

With the help of specialized services (for example, ReviewPro), the social mood of your audience can be expressed in numbers that are easy to use when assessing the effectiveness of advertising on social networks.

Share of advertising exposure (SOV - Share of Voice)

Measuring this indicator can help:

• Evaluate the effectiveness of advertising on a social network, that is, provide answers to the following questions:
• Clarify the degree of recognition of your company (whether customers mention your brand on their own during communication, or only after relevant advertising or promotions).
• Supplement the analysis of competitive activity:

Attraction of clients

In the matter of achieving the set business goals, activities in social networks simply cannot be based only on communications with users. The goal of social media marketing is to generate demand for services, generate leads, and drive sales.

Based on these goals, you should create your own sales funnel and create a channel for generating profit from promoting your brand on social media. Many social media platforms offer the user the ability to generate a standard traffic report. However, for a full analysis, it is better to involve specialized services, for example, Google Analytics, which helps to assess the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, which contributed to the transition of potential customers from your page on the social network to the corporate website. By using UTM links in posts, Google Analitycs helps you find a traffic channel and assess whether it led to lead generation and deal completion.

How to Assess Social Media Advertising Effectiveness: Key Steps

Step 1. Define your social media marketing funnel

This process consists of several stages:

1. Acquaintance.

The tasks of this stage include grabbing the attention of users and stimulating their interest in your brand.

1. Involvement.

You can engage users with the help of entertaining or educational content, thanks to which the interested audience participates in the discussion, leaving comments, and disseminates it through reposts.

1. Conversion.

Now it's time to convert interested users into future buyers by offering them to buy an attractive product, fill out a form, or sign up for a newsletter.

1. Involvement.

One of the great features of social networks is that users who enter the sales funnel engage other people there with their activity. Therefore, the number of your potential customers is constantly growing, and each of them leads people from your circle of friends and relatives to your sales funnel.

Step 2. Determine social media attribution for business

Social media attribution- the process of identifying revenue channels, campaigns and publications. In this case, Google Analytics will come to your aid. However, not all attribution models offered by this service are suitable for social media.

If we assume that the first acquaintance with your brand happened while watching a video on Facebook, then the following user steps look like this:

• After visiting your brand page, the user subscribes to it in order to receive regular news.
• After a couple of days, your page is replenished with an article, which can be read in full only on your site, where the link placed in the post leads.
• The user goes to your site and subscribes to the newsletter to keep abreast of new products and current events.
• A week later, the user's e-mail receives a letter with a code, by entering it on your website, he receives a discount on the product that attracted his attention on the page on the social network.

Google Analytics offers last-click attribution, but it doesn't take into account social media impact. In this case, multi-touch attribution is more effective, with the help of which you can track all of the user's channels that led to a purchase.

Stage 3. Counting CPA in social networks

CPA (cost per acquisition) is an advertising model in which the advertiser pays only for certain user actions: clicks, subscriptions, purchases, registrations.

When you run a Twitter campaign and use it to grow your followers, you can see how many people from that audience have become customers (which is an acquisition). If you know the investment spent on publishing, you can calculate the acquisition cost by dividing the price of the posted post by the number of users who eventually clicked on your link and subscribed.

Stage 4. Calculating the ROI of social networks

ROI = (income minus investments) * 100 / investments

Social media revenue is calculated using the attribution model. If we assume that the income from one conversion action is equal to $ 120, of which 30% belongs to social networks (this was suggested by the attribution model), then the ROI will be equal to $ 40. Of course, this indicator is not always accurate, but it gives an idea of ​​the level of costs.

Social media is an important source of lead generation for businesses, especially B2B. If you follow the above algorithm, you can use it to assess the effectiveness of social networks for the chosen marketing strategy, as well as adjust your actions under this policy in order to stimulate profit growth.

How to determine the effectiveness of social media ads depending on the type of project

1. Stores (services) whose activities are carried out only on social networks.

For such sites, the effectiveness of advertising on social networks is calculated very simply, since all sales are carried out only here. Profit is made up of the cost of all goods sold, and the amount of costs is determined by the cost of production, increased by the amount of investment in promotion in social networks. In this case, the ROI indicator is calculated using the following formula:

D- income from the sale of goods;

З1- the total cost of goods;

1. Public pages and groups, the profit of which is based on the publication of paid guest posts, links to affiliate programs, etc.

For these platforms, the effectiveness of advertising in social networks is also easily calculated using the formula for the ratio of profit to total costs, which is presented above. In this case, the revenue side is the total cost of all paid posts for the period under consideration (month, quarter, etc.). The cost part includes the cost of man-hours for the reporting period, as well as the amount of investment in the promotion of the group.

1. Stores (services) and companies selling services for which social networks are one of the promotion channels in the general sales funnel.

It is rather difficult for these platforms to assess the effectiveness of advertising in social networks, since it is difficult to find the weight of a separate promotion channel in the overall complex of marketing activities. Therefore, first you need to find the right approach that will help simplify the task of calculating the ROI of social networks.

Types of ads that show the most effective social media ads

• Branding.

Brand awareness is the key to its winning position against competitors. With the help of social media, you can reach a huge target audience that exceeds the number of viewers of TV ads. Don't ignore the effectiveness of social media as a brand awareness tool.

• Hidden marketing.

Pop-up banners and other annoying advertisements have long taught social media users to close such pages without even familiarizing themselves with their content. In this regard, the need arose for such advertising on social networks, the effectiveness of which is expressed in the hidden manipulation of the attention of visitors.

This approach takes patience. To begin with, you need to gather a loyal audience around your brand, and then start promoting, which is free from the intrusiveness of conventional advertising, but at the same time pursues the same goals. Most firms for which social media is one of the main promotion channels emphasize the effectiveness of advertising on social networks.

• Viral Marketing.

High-quality viral marketing can take a lot more effort and skill. It is very difficult to generate viral content and achieve its rapid distribution, but the effectiveness of such promotion on social networks is really great. In this case, content that is humorous or stimulating the user to show curiosity will be a great help, which will help to increase brand awareness.

• Black PR.

Black methods are quite unpredictable, because in the end the "dirt" may end up on a company that has sought to denigrate competitors. In this case, one should act more skillfully and delicately, without stopping to the level of spreading gossip and inaccurate information, in order to push the user to the idea that the reputation of competitors is much more modest against the background of the brand in question.

All your actions within the framework of applying the black PR methodology should not leave "tails" so that competitors do not have the opportunity to prove your involvement in what is happening or make claims.

How to improve the effectiveness of social media ads

1. Use the social potential of your employees.

About 89% of brand advertisers use free social media marketing tools to generate their own ad campaigns. 71% of agencies whose clients place an order for business promotion also use them. At the same time, 81% of agencies implement marketing campaigns for their customers using paid social media tools. They are also used by 75% of companies promoting their brand on their own.

From this we can conclude that most brands prefer to attract their own resources and free social media tools to promote and generate content, as well as to interact with the target audience. However, third-party agencies are most often used to create and publish paid classifieds.

If the experience and qualifications of your employees can be effectively involved in promoting your brand on social media, you have an opportunity to save money. In addition, communication with users will be more personalized.

1. Publish social media ads for your target audience.

The results of marketing research confirm that a significant portion of advertisers are convinced of the need to increase their ad spend on social media. The effectiveness of this approach is beyond doubt. However, 40% of those surveyed plan to increase the budget by only 10% or even less. This means that brands are aware of the high performance of Sponsored Ads on social media, but they are not ready to make significant investments in this promotion channel.

If your budget is tight, little things should be considered. To increase the effectiveness of advertising on social networks with minimal financial costs, carefully choose the time and place for publications, and for this you need to know everything about the features of social networks that your target audience prefers.

1. Use social media to increase your audience reach.

Television and other types of advertising are gradually losing their positions. The effectiveness of advertising on social networks is recognized by the majority of advertisers, 40% of whom increase their investments in this type of promotion. It is social media that is recognized as the very phenomenon of our time, which unites various channels for the dissemination of information. If we turn to the results of marketing research, we find interesting facts:

• Over 50% of advertisers promote their brand through offline advertising and sponsored ads on social media. This is due to the fact that at equal costs of creating advertising, the cost of posting on social media is lower.
• More than 25% of advertisers are reallocating their marketing budget in favor of social media advertising.
• About 75% of brands conduct marketing campaigns both on the pages of their own corporate website and in online communities.

With the help of advertising on social networks, you can significantly increase the reach of your target audience, since these sites provide a wide range of paid and free tools. The easiest way to attract users is to promote your community through ads while posting interesting content.

1. Define the goals and objectives of your social media advertising campaign.

To stimulate the growth of sales on social networks, you first need to purchase ads on these sites, with which you will attract the target audience and engage them in interaction. Placing a paid ad on online communities does not generate an immediate increase in sales revenue. However, it is quite possible to turn every subscriber of your community into a buyer. The main thing is to give him something that can interest him, that is, a product with which you can evaluate the effectiveness of advertising on social networks.

1. Create a relevant landing page for your social media users on your website.

More than half of advertisers believe that the same criteria can be used to measure the performance of paid ads in online communities and offline ads, for example, sales growth, increased brand awareness, and free posting about the company. However, placing ads using paid tools on social networks does not always guarantee an increase in sales of your product. Only 10% of ad sellers in online communities commit to achieving this result. In addition, other criteria are used to assess the effectiveness of advertising on social networks, which are used by almost half of the sellers.

To get the most reliable results, you need to analyze the performance yourself. To do this, you can create a landing page on the corporate website for users who click on the advertising links of social networks. Keep track of the number of visitors who completed the steps required to launch the sales process.

However, not all visitors are ready to close the deal right after the first visit. This is why your landing page should have engaging content that will help the user continue to get to know your business. For example, you can offer potential customers a discount for registering on the site.

1. Measure the effectiveness of social media ads.

However, almost a third of advertisers question the ability to measure the effectiveness of paid ad placement in online communities. To obtain data, it is enough to select the appropriate metrics that will be most effective for evaluating your campaign. For example, you can measure the bottom line using the number of followers attracted by a marketing campaign or the number of mentions of your brand in online communities. Such indicators will be useful for analyzing the effectiveness of advertising on social networks.

1. Use social media ads to both inform customers about your brand and to support sales.

After launching a social media campaign, almost 50% of advertisers expect increased sales and brand awareness. You need to gradually involve users in the conversion process, attracting their attention even during the first visit to your page on social networks.

Advertising in online communities gives brands the opportunity to engage with audiences and inform potential customers about the product and new products. However, social media promotion can also act as a sales support tool. The main thing is to choose the appropriate methods and evaluation criteria.

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) characterize the activities of the company. With their help, the organization builds an optimal strategy for work. In very simple terms, KPIs are indicators that make it clear whether an enterprise is able to achieve its goals. Or is the organization trying in vain?

• Paid advertising (targeting / retargeting / seeding);
• Community management.

Set and evaluate KPIs in SMM

Regardless of the goals you pursue, setting KPIs for your personal community is not a difficult task. Think literally for a minute. And imagine the following situation: you lead a community on the VKontakte social network, regularly fill it, interact with the audience. For what? What goal do you set for yourself at this stage of promotion?

To make it easier to formulate an answer to this question, it is worth turning to the possible options. And to understand what, in principle, social platforms are used for.

1. Attracting traffic to the resource;
2. Interaction with potential clients, processing applications and questions;
3. Increasing brand awareness;
4. Placement of orders in a group in the absence of a website.

There are certainly other reasons for working with a social network, but we've covered the most common ones. In addition, the user can find several reasons for promoting a business on a particular site at once. Everything is individual.

It's time to talk about the effectiveness of the promotion and how to evaluate it.

Community size

Business owners strive to get as many members as possible into their group. The large audience of subscribers has hardly hindered anyone. The size of the community affects a variety of metrics. The more people visit the community, the more likes, views, comments, reposts and other activities. All of this has a positive effect on internal web searches. And the number itself, if it is really large, leads new users to the idea that the community has a good reputation. So why not join an interesting group too?

After all, a huge number of people trust her. And it's always tempting.

And everything would be fine if not for one "But". Agree, quantity does not mean quality yet. And it is very important to monitor the quality of subscribers. Especially in the "era" of rigid system algorithms. After all, the most important thing is not to cross out your own efforts with an annoying mistake.

• Percentage of bots / offers and other "deceased"

These users are not only not useful, but they can also harm your community. A group crammed with bots has a low chance of ranking in the search. Ideally, bots should be less than 10% of the total subscriber audience.

Cheating by bots provides more attractive numbers, but this has little effect. And then not at all! In addition, this phenomenon is not approved by the administration of the social network.

• Are new subscribers your target audience?

Let's go straight to an illustrative example. You are the owner of an online children's toys store. Its target audience is mothers from 20 to 30 years old. But part of your audience for some unknown (or understandable) reason consists of male users. This is quite curious, isn't it? And what are the chances that these subscribers will want to buy your item? Let this question remain rhetorical. It's easy to guess where this will lead.

It is for this reason that it is important to analyze and filter personal audiences. Check group statistics for gender and age characteristics.

If you work in a specific region of the country, it will not be superfluous to take into account the geodata of subscribers. For example, you are advertising your restaurant from Voronezh. So what use will subscribers from St. Petersburg bring you? It is unlikely that they will come to dinner in another city. Clear the group of "extra" people, even if they are live users.

Geostatistics

Transitions to the site

For example, you decided to use Metrica. Proceed as follows:

Reports => Sources => Social Networks

Indicate the required time frame. We look:

Only general statistical information is provided here. To make the picture a little clearer, you need to use UTM tags.

Activity

This indicator shows how much the subscribers like the content published in the group. How to measure audience activity? Subscribers will do it themselves, through likes, comments and reposts. If we talk about the social network Instagram, then there you can still take into account the save.

What's the most valuable thing? Answer:

• Reposts;