capturing the value of social media marketing_anne schmidt 2013
TRANSCRIPT
Master Thesis
Social Media Marketing
- Capturing the value of social media marketing -
Submitted at 28th June 2013
WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management
The Otto Beisheim Endowed Chair of Services Marketing
Prof. Dr. Tillmann Wagner
Spring Term 2013
Supervisor:
Prof. Dr. Tillmann
By
Schmidt Anne
Wuppertal 28th June 2013
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ABSTRACT
In today’s marketing mix, every marketing manager is seeking to find unconventional ways
to communicate their message to the market. Unfortunately due to the many social media
platforms that are available and the limited budget, marketers find it difficult to measure the
effectiveness of social media marketing platforms efficiently and effectively. Social media
has taken on an important role to generate awareness, purchase behaviour, attitudes,
acquisitions, brand recognition and post-purchase behaviours. However the question
remains, what value does social media marketing play in businesses today and how can it be
measured?
Purpose: This study concentrates on how companies use social media tools to track their
campaigns and budgets effectively to seek return on investment (ROI) from social media
marketing activities. The main aim is to identify what tracking tools are popular and the
definition of how effectively social media marketing can be measured. The overarching
question also aims at how social media marketing can add value to ones business.
Methodology: Qualitative research both primary and secondary data has been used for this
particular case study. Other forms of collecting data were achieved through a pre-study
online survey and literature reviews.
Conclusion: The importance of social media marketing is growing in every business and it
needs to be measured as part of the whole marketing communication mix. Social media is
another communication tool that should add value to a business and not distract from the
overall business strategy. Tracking tools should assist in identifying how well the brand is
doing and what positive or negative sentiments are being held, how to motivate users to
purchase and engage with the brand and most importantly to achieve purchase intent. Social
media also adds benefits to traditional media and can enhance the reach and the message to
either very targeted customers or create a viral effect through the ‘share’ button.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author wishes to express sincere gratitude to her Professor Dr. Tilmann and research
assistant Alexander Scholz, who has guided the direction of this research paper. The author
also would like to show gratitude and appreciation to her family and friends with their
patience and positive nudging.
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ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………IV
ACKNOLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. V
TABLE OF CONTENTS……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..I
TABLE OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… VIII
1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 9
1.1 TOPIC CONCEPT AND STATEMENT OF OPPORTUNITY............................................... 9
1.2 IMPORTANCE OF THE TOPIC AND DISCUSSION ....................................................... 10
1.3 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES AND RESEARCH QUESTION ................................................ 12
1.4 THESIS OUTLINE........................................................................................................ 13
2. LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................................................ 15
2.1 SOCIAL MEDIA EXPLAINED ....................................................................................... 15
2.1.1 SOCIAL MEDIA LANDSCAPE.................................................................................. 18
2.1.2 SOCIAL MEDIA PAID ADVERTISING ...................................................................... 21
2.1.3 SOCIAL MEDIA IN BUSINESS FUNCTIONS............................................................. 24
2.1.4 SOCIAL MEDIA METRICS, MEASURABILITY & MONITORING TOOLS.................... 27
2.2 SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE 21ST CENTURY AND BEYOND................................................ 33
2.3 MEASURABILITY OF SOCIAL MEDIA ROI................................................................... 36
3. METHODOLOGY & RESEARCH DESIGN................................................................................. 45
3.1 INRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 45
3.2 RESEARCH DESIGN.................................................................................................... 45
3.3 RESEARCH APPROACH.............................................................................................. 46
3.4 ANALYSIS AND PRESENTATION OF DATA................................................................. 47
3.4.1 DATA COLLECTION METHODS.............................................................................. 48
3.4.2 ONLINE SURVEY.................................................................................................... 48
3.4.3 INTERVIEWS.......................................................................................................... 49
3.4.4 PRIMARY AND SECONDARY DATA........................................................................ 51
3.5 DATA INTERPRETATION............................................................................................ 53
3.6 RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY ....................................................................................... 53
3.7 LIMITATIONS AND BIASES ........................................................................................ 54
4. FINDINGS .............................................................................................................................. 56
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4.1 SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE .............................................................................................. 56
4.2 SOCIAL MEDIA MEASUREMENT METRICS................................................................ 57
4.3 MEASURING ROI....................................................................................................... 58
4.4 SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY ................................................................... 60
4.4.1 SOCIAL MEDIA BENCHMARKS .............................................................................. 62
4.5 SOCIAL MEDIA IN ORGANIZATIONS ......................................................................... 63
4.5.1 SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE FUTURE ................................................................................ 65
5. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS .......................................................................... 67
5.1 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................ 67
5.2 RECOMMENDATIONS............................................................................................... 68
LIST OF RESOURCES CONSULTED ............................................................................................. 70
BOOKS:.................................................................................................................................. 70
JOURNALS & INTERNET SOURCES: ....................................................................................... 71
APPENDIX 1- ONLINE SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE .................................................................LXXV
APPENDIX 2- INTERVIEW QUESTIONNAIRE........................................................................ LXXXI
AFFIDAVIT.............................................................................................................................XCIV
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TABLE OF FIGURES
FIGURE 1: THESIS OUTLINE………………………………………………………………………………………………….14
FIGURE 2: SOCIAL MEDIA TIMELINE…………………………………………………………………………………….17
FIGURE 3: SOCIAL MEDIA LANDSCAPE…………………………………………………………………………………20
FIGURE 4: SOCIAL MEDIA PAID ADVERTISING PLATFORMS…………………………………………………22
FIGURE 5: SHIFT FROM OFFLINE ADVERTISING TO ONLINE ADVERTISING……………………………23
FIGURE 6: PAID SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING……………………………………………………………………..24
FIGURE 7: ADAPTATION OF THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN BUSINESS FUNCTIONS…………25
FIGURE 8: MATURITY EVOLUTION MODEL………………………………………………………………………….27
FIGURE 9: RELEVANT METRICS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA APPLICATIONS……………………………………..30
FIGURE 10: MONITORING AND ANALYTIC TOOLS………………………………………………..………………32
FIGURE 11: FINANCIAL OUTCOMES VS. NO-FINANCIAL OUTCOMES……………………………………41
FIGURE 12: INTERVIEW SELECTION CRITERIA………………………………………………………………………51
FIGURE 13: DATA COLLECTION AND SOURCES USED……………………………………………………………52
FIGURE 14: RESEARCH FINDINGS…………………………………………………………………………………………56
FIGURE 15: SURVEY ANSWER 1……………………………………………………………………………………………57
FIGURE 16: SURVEY ANSWER 2……………………………………………………………………………………………58
FIGURE 17: SURVEY ANSWER 3……………………………………………………………………………………………61
FIGURE 18: SURVEY ANSWER 4……………………………………………………………………………………………64
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CHAPTER 1
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 TOPIC CONCEPT AND STATEMENT OF OPPORTUNITY
Erik Qualman (2010) is often quoted: “We don't have a choice on whether we do social
media; the question is how well we do it”. Creating and building social media marketing
programs is a hard task and as Blanchard (2011) describes it, “Social media success is
engineered and carefully planned by large organizations with a lot of efforts in planning,
managing and placing all the right elements in the right way and at the right time”. In 2008
for the first time, businesses started to notice the exponential growth of social networks and
the term social business made its way to boardrooms.
The concept of Social media marketing can provide organizations with detailed, instant
feedback from customers and very valuable market intelligence. In addition using specialized
monitoring, measurement, and analysis tools, social media activities can amplify acquisition
and valuable customer data insights into the calculation of ROI. A social media program can
also compartmentalize companies to advance collaboration, increase department efficiency,
reduce costs and increase business growth (Blanchard 2011).
The concept of this study is to examine and identify the measurable value social media
marketing brings to businesses today, what the current trends are and where do experts see
social media marketing in the near future. The study also wishes to examine best practices
from the industry and how social media marketing is being used successfully.
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1.2 IMPORTANCE OF THE TOPIC AND DISCUSSION
“Now here in a world of Twitter and Facebook and Youtube and Tumblr, you can reach
billions in just seconds…”
- Oprah Winfrey -
Social media marketing has disrupted communication channels with great rigor. It has not
only resulted in real time information being accessible to masses but has also opened the
world to new communication channels and created virtual communities.
Prior to the Web, organizations had only two significant choices to attract attention: Buy
expensive advertising or buy third-party ink from the media. But the Web has changed the
rules. The Web is not TV. Organizations that understand the New Rules of marketing can
develop relationships directly with consumers (Scott 2011).
The web has opened a vast opportunity to reach niche buyers directly with targeted
messages that cost a fraction of what big-budget advertising costs. The web is different.
Instead of one-way interruption, Web marketing is about delivering useful content at just
the precise moment that a buyer needs it (Scott 2011).
Managers have become more comfortable with including blogs and social networks as part
of their integrated marketing communications; they have naturally turned their attention to
questions regarding the return on investment of social media. There is a shortage of interest
and relevant research on the topic. A quick Google search recently for “ROI social media”
returned over 2.5 million hits, many seemingly relevant. Internet marketing and online
retailing conferences now devote attention to ROI uses, and managers are asking
themselves every day, “What’s the ROI of [substitute social media application here]?”
(Hoffman & Fodor 2010).
As Evans (2012) of Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day points out, most marketing
managers are still faced with the fact that they wish to cut through the clutter and target
customers with relevant information at the right time. Social Media Marketing has
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become an additional tool that provides instantaneous feedback and sentiment for a brand.
It seems that most companies are excited about the prospects of using social media
marketing; however the problem is that they generally have a tough time to understand how
to make social media work for them in their business. It is one aspect to articulate what
social media can bring to a business manager or CEO and another is to, what specific value
social media can bring to business in the 21st century (Blanchard 2011).
In the scientific article by Mangold & Faulds (2009), both argue that social media is a hybrid
element of the promotional mix because it carefully combines characteristics of traditional
marketing tools (companies talking to customers) with a highly magnified form of word-of-
mouth (customers talking to one another about companies) whereby marketing managers
cannot control the content and frequency of such information. In today’s world, social media
also springs mixed technologies and media origins that enable instantaneous, real-time
communication, and utilizing multi-media formats such as audio and visual presentations on
the numerous platforms, with global reach capabilities.
In the Nielsen (2012) social media report of 2012, examines how social networking is no
longer at its infancy, but has continued to evolve and offer customers around the world, new
and meaningful ways to engage with people and brands. Social media growth is also
appearing due to the availability of mobile smart phones, tablets and other devices that lead
easy access to social media sites. In addition new social media sites are emerging and are
growing at a tremendous speed.
Pinterest alone emerged as one of the breakout stars in social media for 2012 and is very
successful social media platform today. Through the use of social media, the landscape of
consumers is also rapidly transforming. Consumers around the world are using social media
to learn about other customer experiences, find more information about brands, their
products and services and are influenced by social networks and their trusted communities.
It is found that consumers attitude towards advertising on social media are still evolving.
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According to Nielsen’s (2012) study, while one-third of social media users find advertising on
social networking sites more annoying than other sites, research suggests that there are
opportunities for marketers to engage with consumers via social media. More than a quarter
of social media users say that they are more likely to pay attention to an advert by one of
the social connections, mainly due to the tailored messages that are based on their profile
information, making it more relevant to them (Nielsen 2012).
This Thesis touches upon the aspects of how social media marketing can be valued in
business from ROI to brand equity.
1.3 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES AND RESEARCH QUESTION
This research paper examines and tries to evaluate the value that social media brings to a
business. The general idea and purpose of the study is to contribute to a world wide
discussion on the value and measurability of social media marketing. Social media marketing
is still evolving and there seems to be insufficient literature on social media ROI, or on the
social media value-ads to companies. By the means of this thesis, I will attempt to demystify
the social media phenomenon and understand best practices, as well as establish easy to use
frameworks to measure social media success in business.
For this research paper I approached different media marketing experts from various fields
such as digital agencies, digital marketing managers and social media to gain access to their
view on social media marketing and the value it brings to their businesses. It still seems
evident that many large corporations are relying on digital agencies to measure the value of
social media marketing and use different tracking tools and platforms to achieve this.
However, some companies have also realised that using their own resources and internal
tracking devices of social platforms are more valuable. Social media marketing is not an easy
task to measure compared to traditional media; this thesis tries to condense and make social
media ROI and KPI’s easier to understand and measure, when given a social media blueprint
of tools.
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The broad research topic and approach provided the main research questions that this thesis
wishes to answer and are the following:
a. How effectively can companies/businesses measure social media marketing and ROI?
b. What should social media measure and deliver?
c. How does a social media capture value?
In summary, this research-based thesis focuses on the topic of how social media is measured
in companies and against how social media adds value to a company.
1.4 THESIS OUTLINE
This study consists of five Chapters: Introduction, Pre-study and literature review,
methodology, best practices, findings and discussion. The central theme of this research lies
in evaluating through different research methodologies how social media marketing could
be measured and what value it brings to business in the 21st century.
Chapter one begins by examining what social media marketing is, how it is seen by business
today and the social media landscape. The main part of the discussion is that social media is
a two way communication stream and works very differently to that of other above the line
and below the line marketing activities such as radio, TV or Billboards and should be viewed
as a communication/marketing tool rather than a stand-alone business unit.
Chapter two is a discussion taken from the literature review and examines how measurable
tools are being used in the industry and what experts say about measuring success with
social media marketing campaigns. It also touches on ROI and how various literatures try to
define how social media can be measured. It also highlights the vast social media landscape
and how it has changed businesses and impacts business functions.
Chapter three clarifies the research approach and methods used in the study. Qualitative
research, in-depth interviews and pre-study surveys were used to examine the value social
media marketing brings to businesses. Advantages and challenges of research
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methodology as well as their limitations have been included.
Chapter four discusses the pre-study and in-depth interviews where analysed and important
findings presented. How experts have answered the questions of the ROI and value of social
media in business. It also interprets the data collected and depicts clusters of themes and
commonalities of the research findings.
The last chapter focuses on relevant conclusions, presenting important insights and
providing potential recommendations to future research and insights.
Figure 1: Thesis outline
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CHAPTER 2
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 SOCIAL MEDIA EXPLAINED
When looking back to the history of social media Kaplan & Haenlein (2009), describe it best
by citing the early discovery of the era of Social Media, which started by Bruce and Susan
Abelson, who founded the “Open Diary”, an early social networking site that brought
together online diary writers into one community.
Social media marketing relates to the sharing of information, experiences, and perspectives
throughout community-oriented websites, it is becoming increasingly significant in our
online world. Thanks to social media, the geographic walls that divide individuals are
crumbling, and new online communities are emerging and growing. Some examples of social
media include blogs, forums, message boards, picture and video sharing sites, user-
generated sites, wikis, and podcasts. Each of these tools helps facilitate communication
about ideas that users are passionate about, and connects like-minded individuals
throughout the world (Weinberg 2009).
Kotler et al. (2009), describers how social media networking services are those that contain
directories of some categories, such as means of connecting to friends, recommender
system linked to trust. Marketers are monitoring social networks communication for
information about consumers. People discuss their opinions online more freely than they
may in person and these discussions can influence groups, community’s brands and
organizations (Kotler et al. 2009).
Shirky (2009) explains how social media has changed history and the media landscape as
consumers and businesses have known since the last century. No longer are traditional news
platforms and professionals sending information to consumers relevant, but news is now
being documented by means of tweets, uploading videos on YouTube, posts on Facebook
and the like. Citizens are not only consumers of the social media landscape but
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immediately become publishers and producers as they have for the first time the freedom to
engage, modify, post, edit and send information instantaneously. The era of social media is
global, social, ambiguous and cheap. Consumers now have more access to brands and
interaction points than ever before.
Shirky (2009) illustrates how consumers for the first time are active participants who can
interact with each other instead of just brands. Messages are not only sent from one media
source, but consumers are also now connecting and sharing, tweeting, posting, as well as
liking amongst each other. The media landscape that existed before, where professionals
were broadcasting messages are now a thing of the past, social media allows consumers to
be active participants who can broadcast and share information as quickly. Now that media
is becoming increasingly social, innovation can happen anywhere and move very quickly
from one country to the next.
By adaptation of different social media timelines, I was able to demonstrate an overview of
revolutionary steps in history on how social media has dramatically changed the landscape
of media today. The below illustration below depicts innovations that took place at
important facets of human history, which influenced the media landscape and social media
today.
With the start of the Internet, many businesses needed to migrate to the internet platforms,
such as migrating magazines, news portals and phone calls online.
The new audience of customers is increasingly more than listeners but full participants and
social media is allowing them to use this as a platform to participate in conversations and
single message to the masses is no longer the way to communicate. The choice to businesses
today is not about whether this is the media landscape that businesses should participate in,
it is rather more how best social media can be used to promote and assist a business with its
future success, even though it means changing the way business has always done it (Shirky
2009).
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Figure 2: Social Media Timeline adapted & modified from Facebookjustice (2011)
After the .com bubble, social media sites started to emerge and burst into success in the
early 2000’s and by 2004 most social media platforms emerged.
Web 2.0 as a term was first used in 2004 to describe a new way in which software
developers and end-users started to utilize the World Wide Web; a platform, whereby
content and applications are no longer created and published by individuals, but instead are
continuously modified by all users in a participatory and collaborative fashion. The view of
Kaplan & Haenlein (2009) is that Social Media is a group of Internet-based applications,
which builds on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and allows for
user generated content. As many authors revealed, (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2009 and Stuber
2010) Social Media changes frequently and new social application sites are created on a daily
basis.
The term “Social Media”, was coined and contributed to the prominence it has today. In
most recent “virtual worlds”: computer based simulated environments inhabited by three
dimensional avatars are known as virtual worlds as Second Life (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2009).
The most prominent platforms that most people are familiar with are; Facebook, Twitter,
Wikipedia, LinkedIn and recent years the likes of Pinterest and Instagram have made its
mark.
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Social media is a set of tools, a new technology that allows us to connect and build
relationships with customers and prospective customers. Other forms of media tools such as
telephone, radio, television, direct mail, print advertising and billboards are just another tool
set for marketers, just that social media can be more effective (Safko 2010).
2.1.1 SOCIAL MEDIA LANDSCAPE
Most social media-marketing authors introduce (Beilharz 2010; Grabs and Bannour 2011;
Stuber 2010) the conversation prism by Ethority (2012) from Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas,
which depict the social media landscape in a graphical format. The conversation prism is a
complete ecosystem of social media platforms that are ordered in categories. Figure 3,
focuses on the adaptation conversation prism for the German specific market. It is important
to note that every country uses an adaptation of its own social media platform; China for
example banned the use of Facebook, however uses a social network platform named
RenRen that is a clone of Facebook (Beilharz 2010).
Countries such as South Africa use the social site Mxit.com, which was founded in
Stellenbosh. It is an interaction platform with over 50 million users across Africa and works
on over 300 mobile handsets, which is increasingly great for the vast African mobile
consumer market (Mxit 2013). Mxit gives corporations the ability to instantly connect to
millions of users in and around Africa.
Social media is everywhere, but the important part to note is that marketers need to be
aware how to best tap into the potential of reaching their audience, be it global, regional or
local and being relevant.
Social media allows companies to be able to niche target, geo target, and gender target and
reach just the right segmentation that is applicable for their products or services. With these
open and mainly free platforms, customers as well as company employees are being better
informed about brands and perceptions than ever before.
Social networking sites change and new platforms appear almost on a daily basis, the
question to businesses is: what is the right platform that a business should engage in to be
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successful and what is the measurability in the long and short term.
Marketers now have the opportunity to deliver targeted messages at the right moment to
the right target audience on the right platform. As Scott (2009) reminds us that individuals
don’t go to the Web looking for advertising, they are on a quest for content. Marketers can
seek the opportunity to address content information by providing this on various platforms
such as social media.
Due to the vast social media ecosystem, there are a number of different platforms business
can target and expert media companies usually assist in what social media platforms or
networks businesses should either advertise or develop a community page. The agency
INPROMO, in Germany for example have released over 300 platforms with the categories
and criteria of age, gender and interest (www.socialmediaplanner.de). This media planner
can assist corporations to specifically target an audience based on their age and interest,
however it is fair to say that the top ranking sites internationally remain to be: Facebook,
Twitter, Pinterest, Blogger, LinkedIn, Tumblr and YouTube. For the purpose of this study we
will concentrate and focus on the top ranking social media sites.
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Figure 3: Social media landscape (Source: Ethority 2012) http://www.ethority.net/blog/2012/03/28/social-
media-prism-germany-4/ )
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2.1.2 SOCIAL MEDIA PAID ADVERTISING
Social media advertising is used as a form of online-targeted advertising that focuses on
social media sites. Through the targeted social media platforms, marketers can use different
target advertising banner ads or search ads to promote a product or service.
Nielsen & Vizu (2013) draw the distinction to ‘social marketing’ and ‘social media marketing’
that both involve social media. Social marketing is the usage of free tools, such as Facebook,
Twitter or YouTube, whilst social media marketing, is a form of paid medium that are adverts
on Facebook, sponsoring blogs and content and promoted tweets.
In order to understand different social media advertising options available for advertisers I
have focused on the most dominant social media sites: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and
YouTube in the figure below. All platforms use a bidding process for marketers; most media
is bought by a (CPC) cost per click basis or cost per impression (CPM). The (CPC) model is
probably still one of the most desired, as the advertiser is charged only for each click that the
adverts receivers from a viewer. Whilst the CPM model, is one of the first advertising banner
ad principles, whereby the advertiser is charged only for each time the advert receives 1,000
impressions.
With the array of measuring metrics for the social media paid advertising, it is clear that very
solid objectives need to be taken into account in order to get the best results and measure
ROI of a campaign.
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Figure 4: Social media Paid advertising platforms. (Sources: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter 2013)
Nielsen and Vizu (2013) have shared a report, whereby more than 500 companies
participated on current attitudes regarding paid social media advertising. The results show
that marketer’s increasingly used their budgets to use social media in conjunction with other
advertising channels, but the ROI remains a question that marketers still have.
According to the Nielsen and Vizu (2013) report, social media paid advertising is considered
a fairly new practice for advertisers (not more than 3 years old), paid social media
advertising is increasing and is increasingly viewed as an integral, cross platform tactic and is
running in conjunction with other online and offline media.
Other key insights of the Nielsen and Vizu (2013) report study are that 64% of respondents
are seeking to increase their Paid advertising spent on the social media platforms. The
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budget is shifting from offline to online to fund social media advertising as indicated in the
Figure 5.
Figure 5: Shift from offline advertising to online advertising. Source: Nielsen & Vizu: Paid Social Media
Advertising Report 2013.
To measure paid social media ROI, metrics such as ‘likes’, ’pins’, and click-throughs are often
used. However most advertisers and agencies believe that sales generated and brand lift,
which are brand related and have cross-platform applicability are the most appropriate
metrics to use to determine ROI. Interestingly the study also indicated that most advertisers/
brand marketers when asked about what metrics they would like to use to calculate ROI
indicated that they would prefer the exact same metrics used in the offline medium, and
additional metrics specific to the online medium. This however is enforced that most of the
objectives indicated are branding related, and brand metrics are commonplace in the offline
world (Nielsen & Vizu 2013).
The study also illustrates what marketers and agencies use to gauge the most effective ways
to measure ROI. The table below indicates the results conducted by the study (Nielsen &
Vizu 2013)
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Figure 6: Source: Nielsen & Vizu: Paid Social Media Advertising Report 2013.
There is still doubt and unconvinced effectiveness that paid social media provides to
advertising agencies, indicating strongly that the growth of this medium is lacking the
relevant, universal and standard form of measuring metrics’ and ROI. There is still a strong
focus that media sellers and agencies who invest in building capabilities required to deliver
social media benchmarks, and better clarity around measurability of social media ROI
(Nielsen & Vizu 2013).
2.1.3 SOCIAL MEDIA IN BUSINESS FUNCTIONS
As social media networking platforms have become a strong element to everyone’s business,
it has also become a strong part of including the right resources to manage these social
media platforms. There are various phases that companies implement to monitor social
media and campaigns on a regular basis. It is also a big misperception that social media is a
separate silo; it affects business units in organisations.
According to Blanchard (2011), Li and Solis (2013), there are several touch-points that reflect
how social media can influence business unit functions which as illustrated below.
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Figure 7: Adaptation of the effect of social media in Business functions (Blanchard 2011 and Li & Solis 2013).
Li and Solis (2013) discuss the value of social media in businesses as well as the awareness of
CEO’s and executives as to how essential social media has become in order for their business
to succeed. It is also noticeably important to manage big data for customer intelligence.
Customer social activities are normally unstructured data that is difficult to integrate or
structure into a customer database within a company.
The graph 7 specifies how different business units are affected by social media. Human
resources can better recruit and manage leads and potential candidates by the means of
LinkedIn. Customer support is backed up by the likes of Twitter or Facebook that can help
with real-time queries and support the call centres of a business. Sales can be generated
through social media online campaigns by driving traffic to a website or purchase page.
Public relations can react to real time messages of customers, whether complains or not, it
can react to news and spread information at a much quicker and reach a much larger
audience. By using social media and appropriate monitoring tools, the business receives
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information that can be used for future campaigns. This market intelligence on business
consumers can easily be tracked and even competitor environments better understood.
Business units can implement defence or tactical strategies to outperform competitors and
use the business intelligence to better understand their customer’s. When it comes to
marketing communication, social media will support campaigns and use these to leverage
reach. For example a TV commercial can be aired on TV, but also played on Facebook,
YouTube and linked on various other platforms to reach as many of the relevant audience as
possible. Finally social media can also alleviate the lead times of a process in a business, by
for example reducing the time it take a call, a call centre can use Twitter to react and answer
queries at a much quicker, more effective manner.
Hinchcliffe (2011) has identified four steps to view social business and its maturity level.
Figure 8 illustrates the four ways to engage and interact with consumers and social business.
• Getting Involved- the phase where businesses are driving the world to their
online presence, an extension of their website and typically these consist of
blogs, customer forums, and other basic social features. This part is the standard
needed to slowly start engaging with social media and to send brand messaging
and communication through this method (Hinchcliffe 2011).
• Getting interactive- these are the likes of Facebook and Twitter social media
platforms and regional channels that can take brand messages further to other
countries. This step is to make sure that building reach, establishing effective
networks and connecting users to almost everyone within the social channels
available. This approach is scaleable and requires Facebook pages, Twitter
accounts and “Like” buttons that connect an organization’s content with the
world social ecosystem (Hinchcliffe 2011).
• Getting Intimate- many mature organizations have realised that deeper
engagement and interaction is possible. This is when ORM (Online Reputation
Management) and social tracking tools are enabling companies to listen, analyse
and engage with customers. Understanding and listening to important
conversations can assist in making real-time resolving problems and ensure
appropriate responses. Areas that will be affected positively in business units
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are: marketing, sales, operations and innovation as well as hiring (Hinchcliffe
2011).
• Getting Influenced- This is probably the most advanced level of social media
engagement, as it involves ways that workers and customers use technology to
connect with each other. Mature social business approach involves everyone
from the organisation and becomes more like a co-creation (Hinchcliffe 2011).
Figure 8: Maturity evolution model adapted and modified from DachisGroup by Hinchcliffe (2011)
2.1.4 SOCIAL MEDIA METRICS, MEASURABILITY & MONITORING TOOLS
In most social media campaigns and strategies, corporations as well as agencies need to
understand what is working and what is not. In the overall social media strategy and social
media campaign, a clear definition of goals and measurability of a campaign needs to be set
and measured.
Before we delve into the different social media monitoring matrices Blanchard (2011), warns
that using matrices and all the different monitoring tools can easily side track from what is
important to a campaign and ultimately an organization. Measurement, analysis, and
reporting require context, therefore it is crucial to use caution and view measurements to
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support by plethora of data points of a whole. Using social media to measure business
objectives is crucial for the purpose of social media campaigns, entices momentum to social
media platforms, enhances accountability to the rest of the organization when measured
correctly and social media programs gives managers’ information and insights into what
parts of the campaign are working and what are not.
Measuring the impact of online advertising is fairly easy, as there are defined guidelines such
as Unique Visitors, Page Views, Cost per Click, and Cost per Acquisition etc. However those
who are engaged with social media must attempt to find a way of measuring not just the
online advertising within social media, but also framework surrounding social media (Fisher
2009).
IAB (2009) measures and defines ‘Social Media Ad Metrics Definitions’, they provide clear
frameworks to how effectiveness and social media sites and applications can be measured.
IAB (2009) breaks the social media landscape into three different categories, namely:
• Social Media Sites measured by: Unique Visitors, Cost per unique visitor, Page
views, Visits, Return visits, Interaction rate, Time spent, Video installs, Relevant
action taken.
• Blogs measured by: Conversation size (number of sites, links and reach of a
conversation), Site relevance (Conversation density, Author credibility etc.)
• Widgets & Social Media Applications measurable by: Active Users, Installs,
Audience Profile, Unique User, Reach, Growth, Number of installs per user.
Even though the frameworks of IAB are measurable, as Fisher (2009) investigates, some
social media experts also find that the qualitative aspect of social media measurement was
not integrated in the metrics. All comments for example cannot be measured, as some
sentiments are positive whilst others are negative. There are also other attributes to
measure such as: Velocity (duration on site), participation (comments), tone (sentiment),
activity (web Analytics of blog or site) and qualitative attributes (comments, what did they
say, what did they mean).
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Hoffman and Fodor (2010) have a different approach and adapted to the measuring metrics
model by classifying them according to social media applications and social media
performance objectives. In figure 9 the metrics can be viewed and below are the three social
media objectives that provide a brief explanation as to how it is measured.
• Brand Awareness: In social media, every time a person uses an application by
or about the company, gains increased brand exposure. Traditionally brand
awareness was measured by tracking studies and surveys (Hoffman & Fodor
2010).
• Brand Engagement: This is a definition that involves customers interacting
with a brands or company. It can measure by customers participating in
online environments or signing up with VIP memberships. It can also be
measured how brands can entice engagement by introducing games or other
motivations for participants to engage. Brand engagement also involves user-
generated content, reinforcing loyalty to the brand and making the customer
more likely to commit additional efforts to support the brand in the future.
Traditionally, marketers measured engagement through customer surveys.
Online marketers can use one-time versus repeated interactions or active
participation compared to passive consumption of social media as proxy
measures (Hoffman & Fodor 2010).
• Word of Mouth: Once consumers are aware and engaged in a brand, in the
social media environment they are more likely to communicate their opinions
to other consumers and/or shared communities they belong to. Loyal
customers communicate positive attitude towards the brand such as a
companies Twitter presence, Facebook page or YouTube video. Dissatisfied
customers may also share negative attitudes towards the brand. Traditionally,
word of mouth was measured through surveys that measure the likelihood of
recommendation or customer satisfaction and/or purchase intent (Hoffman &
Fodor 2010).
Overall measurement focuses on assigning values and hard numbers to a point of interest
relating to social media; the most important data that needs to be measured needs to be
30
relevant and quantified (Blanchard 2011).
This thesis tries to understand the various social media measuring tools, ROI and best
practices, however also keeping in mind that these might change over time.
Figure 9: Relevant metrics for Social Media Applications Adapted from Hoffman & Fodor 2010.
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Now that we have analyzed the common measurement metrics used for social media, we
cannot forget the monitoring tools that exist to be able to monitor sentiments, keywords
and collect relevant data. In every social media program or campaign Online Reputation
Management usually has an important role and function.
When becoming a social business the most relevant tool that is first implemented in
companies is the Online Reputation Management tool, or also known as ORM. These tools
are the research and analyse personal, professional, business or industry reputation as
represented by content across all types of online media. These types of online media can be
everything that has been published about a company, its services, products or industry and
is collected in a funnel and illustrated as a dashboard for the company to act accordingly to
complains, negative mentions, positive mentions, trends and developments. ORM is formed
from the urgent need to manage consumer-generated media in a way that business can
actively listen and react accordingly.
According to Blanchard (2011), Online reputation management consists of listening for
negative or incorrect statements made about an organization, assets, services or products,
and when needed is able to set the record straight and the company can react in real-time.
Brand monitoring should be a default social-media function, taking place constantly.
Effective monitoring, inform everything from product design to marketing and provides
advance warning of potentially negative publicity. However it is moreover important that all
relevant business functions, such as communications, design, marketing, public relations, or
risk are involved and can respond immediately (Divol et. al 2012).
ORM is an important part of the cornerstones of measurement practices as Blanchard (2011)
points out. ORM is gaining important insights into customers, and enlightens business
sentiments of their brand online, products or services they sell. ORM also increases the
perception and allows for opportunities to listen and engage with their customers. What has
been-under-utilized has been to gain insights about ones competitors and their customer’s
perceptions about their products and services. Companies that are actively listening, can
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use opportunities to speak to customers directly offering them relevant feedback or offers.
ORM also allows for companies to use effective PR by understanding what the real
influencers and opinion leaders of their brand are. ORM allows for early warning systems for
a reactive or good defence strategy.
There are a number of brand monitoring tools, Google analytics and built in analytics to
measure metrics and brand engagements. Some of these social media analytical and
monitoring tools include the following:
In Figure 10: Monitoring and analytic tools adapted from (Dyer2013) and company websites.
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2.2 SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE 21ST CENTURY AND BEYOND
The media is no longer as simple as it was in the days when billboard, print and later,
television advertising were the only real options. Consumers have become more
sophisticated in their response to branding campaigns, just as the media has become more
complex and demographically focused. There is a fundamental “Shift in Power”, from a two-
way communication and about which businesses no longer control messages (Campbell
2003).
There are various media touch-points that Campbell (2003) points out to build a brand
experience. Touch-points are wherever a customer interacts with a brand, such as
advertising, retail presence, online presence (social media, website, mobile site, applications
for tablets). It is also important to note that each of these consumer touch-points participate
part of a single coherent brand.
Social media has grown exponentially. One out of every 7 people in the world has a
Facebook page. Nearly 4 in 5 active internet users visit social networks and blogs (Nielsen
2013).
The rise of the Smart-phone/Tablet
The Nielsen Social Media Report (2012) state that the time spent on smart phones has risen
yearly. Mobile applications have doubled in time and period as more smart-phone owners
entered the market and the number of available apps multiplied. The future of mobile
marketing is on the rise in America according to Nielsen’s report. Social media is best
consumed on computers, desktops and increasingly on mobile applications and tablets. The
future of social media is also all about the social network sites and the top social networks
with the most visitors are; Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, Wordpress , LinkedIn, Pinterest,
Google+ and Tumbler (Nielsen 2012).
The psychological question also lies in why we connect as most social networking sites are
means to connect to people that we know in real life, also more and more mutual friend
connections are on the rise as well as access to business networks such as LinkedIn are
important business networking tools in the 21st century.
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Micro-blogging and interactive TV watching
It seems that Twitter in recent years has made its mark, and according to Nielsen (2012) the
micro blogging site with only 140 characters, will be a key driver of social TV interaction.
Nielsen (2012) reports that during June 2012, a third of active Twitter users tweeted about
TV-related content, which was an increase of 27 percent from the beginning of the year.
This would give a lot of incentives to marketers, who can monitor these Tweets, interact
with the audience and entice them to take part in interactive games and increase frequency
and reach of TV-programs or even adverts.
Social customer care
In recent years customer care has seen that opening social media channels to complain has
increased productivity and resolved lead-time. In my experience all customer complaints
that came through social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook or even YouTube, could
be tracked immediately and comments monitored and issues resolved within hours.
Companies like BestBuy, uses the means of their Twitter platform (Twelpforce) to interact
and engage with customer queries, from prices to complaints within seconds.
The real value in the real time response to a problem or a negative mention is so that a bad
mention or situation can be turned around before the customers’ frustration escalates into
anger. More advantages that companies should consider are the valued real-time feedback,
faster resolution times than through other media such as phone or email. Due to the faster
resolution times that social media is providing organizations found a 10 percent shift from
toll-free phone support and hence social media may result in a significant cost reduction for
many customer support departments (Blanchard 2011).
The change of consumer decisions
According to Nielsen (2012) report, consumers are changing their behavioural pattern and
the decision journey has changed due to social media. In the past, companies could control
the messages and progress of consumers on linear purchase funnel intent. With social media
platforms and networks, consumer’s decision journey has changed dramatically. Consumer
decisions are behaviours increasingly driven by the opinions, tastes and preferences of
global pool of friends, peers and influencers. The Global social consumer has somewhat
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different ways of consuming social media and how they purchase. Asia is in the forefront
when it comes to social media consumption on mobile and tablet devices. This might also be
skewed as Asia-Pacific has a much bigger population than Europe. However Latin Americans
use the computer more to access social media, whereas Middle East /Africa are the front-
runners when it comes to accessing social media through their mobile devices.
The role of social media in the 21st century is affecting consumer decisions around the world.
Nielsen (2012) reports that Social media’s influence on purchase intent is strong across all
regions, but strongest among online consumers in the Asia-Pacific, Latin America and Middle
East/African markets. Emerging markets are consuming social media and 30 percent of
online consumers in the Middle East/ Africa region and 29 percent in Asia-Pacific use social
media on a daily basis to learn more about brands/products/services, with one-third of
respondents in both regions connecting on a weekly basis. Across all regions, social media
has the potential to influence consumers’ entertainment and home electronics purchase
decisions. These categories are followed by: Travel/Leisure (60%), Appliances (58%),
Food/Beverage (58%), Clothing/Fashion (58%) and restaurants (57%). These categories were
also the most discussed products/services via social networking.
Social media presents a huge opportunity for brands to gain positive favour with consumers.
With growing disposable income in emerging markets, savvy marketers can harness the
growing adoption and influence of social media to impact business (Nielsen 2012).
Overall for businesses going into 2013, integrated media is the future of marketing brands
and businesses. Green (2012) as well as Nichols (2013) point out that the future trend is that
companies must embrace integrated marketing and measure these as such.
Customers are now expecting and demanding brands to be visible on all platforms. This
requires integrated plans with consistent messaging and emphasis on real-time marketing.
Marketing plans should include advertising, PR, social media and experimental components.
All plans need to be tied to the brand goals and a cohesive strategy needs to be
implemented in order to measure all marketing aspects (Green 2012).
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2.3 MEASURABILITY OF SOCIAL MEDIA ROI
“Social media measurement is like driving a modern car. You may have a dashboard with all
the lights, toggles, gauges, and metrics, but remember, the most important piece of data to
have in front of you is the GPS screen. The GPS screen indicates where you want to go (your
objective), where you are now, and how to get there.”
-Jeremiah Owyang-
Social Media marketing and its measurability have been researched, discussed, debated in
many books, articles, blogs, journals and the like. It seems that there are different views on
measurability of social media marketing and different schools of thoughts are evident. Due
to all the different measuring metrics, it is also important to consider that each social media
platform needs to be measured differently, be it through ‘Likes’, ‘Followers’, ‘Fans’, ‘Shares’
etc.
As Qualman (2010) describes it; the currency in social media isn’t euros, pesos, or dollars;
rather meaningful engagement, participation, and value creation rule the day. The World
Wide Web is being categorized by billions of users across the world, and if individuals or
businesses want a say in how they are categorized, they need to participate with the
appropriate currency. And just as in the real world, true givers are rewarded handsomely.
The subject Managing Marketing implementation and control hold two full chapters of the
book; Marketing Manager (Kotler et al. 2009) and covers marketing dashboards, measuring
marketing performance and productivity. The topic of measurability and effectiveness vs.
efficiency of any marketing activity is a huge subject in today’s world. The ever-changing
online environment is one that seems to have caused the most stir amongst businesses
today.
The report by Hoffman and Fodor (2010) argues that social measurement should start by
turning traditional ROI approach measures on its head. Instead of emphasizing marketing
investments and calculating returns, companies need to consider the consumer motivation
to use social media and then measure the social media investments that customers make as
they engage with the companies brand.
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The study of Rogers and Sexton (2012) analysed the changing practices in large organizations
in the areas of data collection and usage, marketing measurement and ROI, and the
integration of digital and traditional marketing. The research found significant gaps between
the desire and execution as companies attempt to measure marketing ROI. The sample
findings were astonishing, 51 percent of firms confirm that a lack of sharing customer data
with their own organization is a barrier to effectively measure their marketing ROI. The
barrier might also be the vast amount of new digital tools that can be harnessed for
marketing purposes, be it through branded applications for smart-phones, online video
content channels or social media networking sites such as Facebook. The often tantalizing
amounts of data that can be measured and captured of the customers digital footprint
becomes overwhelming and marketing measures and ROI often becomes too time
consuming for most companies. It is also not easy to link digital marketing to clear business
objectives or to measurements of marketing ROI.
Furthermore Rogers and Sexton (2012) study reveals how marketers are struggling to
compare their efforts across various digital media channels. The study further examines that
77 percent of businesses are trying to get traditional and digital marketing to work better
together and remains a major goal in their marketing departments. Some of the reasons why
this is a struggle is that the digital marketing tools are often measured with metrics that are
unique to them – e.g. ‘shares’ and ‘likes’ are measured on Facebook, where ‘re-tweets’ are
unique to Twitter. Measuring problems occur due to the fact that comparing digital
marketing efforts is often difficult and cannot easily be compared to other channels. Digital
versus traditional marketing channels are often measured with different metrics.
Interestingly 50 percent of companies report that they are focusing on re-organizing their
marketing departments to improve integration of traditional and digital measuring platforms
(Rogers & Sexton 2012).
In the Lenskold (2011) report, social media is reaching a critical mass where it needs to
demonstrate return on investment much like the other media channels. However the
measures of social media must go beyond the engagement and participation rates which
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could influence a purchase decision. It is important to consider that social media ROI
depends on cost-effective sales and revenues, which is achieved through improvements in
effectiveness and better integration with the traditional marketing mix.
The Lenskold Group (2011) report, adds that social media marketing’s ROI is dependent on
cost-effectively generating sales and revenue. Lenskold Group (2011) designed a checklist for
measurement of social media marketing.
Amongst these are the following:
• Establish a clear strategy and marketing objectives
Compare social media efforts with traditional marketing activities or measure
what type of social media platform best reaches your targeted segment of
customers.
• Run basic ROI scenarios with conversion details
This is best used to run an estimated scenario to the amount of budget spent
and the best estimate of the financial return and ROI.
• Determine data sources
Sources of tracking, these could be traffic patterns, click-throughs, landing
pages and sign ups etc. Analytics need to make the connection between social
media data and the outcome data such as sales, revenue or leads.
• Prioritize measurements based on feasibility, resource requirements and benefits
These need to be derived from improving marketing effectiveness relative to
the cost of time and resources.
The need for social media investment (ROI) is becoming an urgent topic in most businesses
today. The book ROI of social Media by Blanchard (2011) recommends that marketers must
build strategies incorporating a two-way dialog and must measure the impact on their
brands in order to make the right strategic and tactical decisions. Marketers can no longer
gloss over the importance of measuring the impact of social media without endangering the
health of their brands.
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Marketing has become in recent decades more measurable than ever. Over the last decade
and with the advent of social media, marketers can now apply many of the lessons learned
from measuring traditional media to measuring social media (Powell et al. 2011).
It is important to note that the topic relevance is that in the near future, social media will
become a required component of all brand marketing activities. As this trend is progressing,
marketers need to make the right decision with key aspects of social media and determine
how to measure its effectiveness in the context of all other marketing activities (Powell et al.
2011).
The article by Neff (2011), discloses that marketing input can be analysed from any given
sufficient levels of spending and defined time. However, problems have occurred to measure
ROI in social media because the levels of spending for digital and social media are often
overridden by the impact of the higher-reach media such as TV. Social media does not work
on the same predictable and measurable model that paid media has been working on.
Rightly so, every campaign and objective differs and immediate sales objectives for example
in the automotive industry are often a long-term process and may not take place for years
before a customer purchases a product. This article reminds us that it is important to
calculate the combined impact of media elements, including their synergy, rather than
viewing them entirely in isolation.
The article by Solis (2010), addresses the concern that social media is transforming
businesses, but ROI has often taken the back seat. According to the 2009 Myinga and Babson
Executive education study, 84 percent of professionals representing a variety of industries
reported that they do not measure ROI in social media programs. In a turbulent economy,
programs that are not contributing to the bottom line, expansion of markets and share of
mind are simply taken away. In 2010, the Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG)
and Anderson Analytics released a “Marketing Trends 2010” report that studied areas of
focus for marketers in that year. Marketing ROI was one of the top priorities placing an
emphasis on measuring return across the board. Social media ROI was also one of the top
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10 slots, behind blogging, word-of-mouth, and community building (Solis 2010).
Solis (2010), also rightfully mentions that establishing a presence on social media is ‘free’,
but there is a price tag on time and resources spent that don’t materialize without costs.
Costs can be established by simply studying the amount of time and resources spent in
establishing and cultivating social presence, interactions and digital relationships. Instead of
viewing social media as being a reactive device, it is also rich with possibilities when
designed to perform specific tasks or provide designated clicks to action.
Furthermore Solis (2010) points out the successes of various companies when it comes to
measuring the performance of social media platforms. Starbucks for instance, set out to
increase traffic in stores around the country through a ‘free pastry’ program shared through
social networks. According to Starbucks, 1 million customers visited the local stores that day.
The company didn’t explain the total revenue generated as a result of word-of-mouth
marketing conducted via Facebook and Twitter, but one can be able to measure the revenue
generated and ROI.
Additionally, Solis (2010) describes of several companies who measured with their KPI’s the
overall business objective and could track and generate good profits from social networks:
• Dell reported in 2009 that $3 million in sales were attributed to the @DellOutlet
account on twitter.
• JetBlue and United Airlines use social networks as part of their special fares
programs and track the income and measure ROI.
• Domino’s Pizza reported that 29% in pre-tax profits are attributed to its
partnerships with Foursquare.
Most smart marketers have invented different forms of tracking to analyse the ROI, i.e. with
redemption codes for coupons, QR scanning codes, competition entries around the
marketing mix using the least squared regression analysis and market research methods
around the brand tracking and other tools. The aim is to identify how consumers make
product/service choices, how they are being influenced and their marketing activities. But
how can companies and organizations measure social media from a financial return?
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Blanchard (2011) describes ROI in social media as, two different types of measurement;
being financial outcomes and non-financial outcomes.
Figure 11: Financial outcomes versus no-financial outcomes (Adapted from Blanchard 2011 pg. 211)
It seems clear that there is a large distinction between financial and non-financial outcomes.
The first can be measured in currency, while the second cannot. The non-financial results
can be subsequently only measured by the yield of reach, increased exposure and improved
brand image (Blanchard 2011).
ROI can be simply defined by the following equation explained by Blanchard (2011):
ROI = (gain from investment – cost of investment) / cost of investment
This equation is the relationship between the investment and the return, and it is also
typically expressed by a percentage. The ROI is also always measured in the equation and is
media agnostic and needs to always have the same currency value. It is important to note
that ROI can only be measured after the investment has yielded a return and cannot be
estimated beforehand (Blanchard 2011).
Traditional marketing metrics with narrowly defined ROI are measured for short-term results
and seldom companies engage in long term profits that social media marketing has
enhanced in campaigns and overall brand strategy. There is still a lack of ROI measurability
from a pure financial standpoint in social media.
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In order to fully understand ROI in social media, Blanchard (2011) describes how profit and
loss (P&L) statements cannot be tied to social media non-financial measurements. The
number of people following a companies Twitter account, does not impact the P&L
statement of a business. Measuring just pure non-financial outcomes simply isn’t enough
and financial outcomes are where ROI measurements need to appear. It is important to
understand that each business activity, milestone and practice assists in a correlation of
social media activity and assisting in measuring effective ROI for an organization (Blanchard
2011).
During the ROI social media research quest, many sites surprisingly embedded ROI metrics’
and formulated ROI calculators such as (www.Dragonsearch.com) and (www.ethority.com);
these try to assist marketers to indicate the ROI and assists in managing the data bank.
Ethority for example focuses on the Number of fans, contacts generated through wall,
contacts generated through fan profiles, as well as the overall budget spent. Even though
these simple calculations discharge an ROI investment for Facebook and Twitter, they do not
ensure and view the overall picture.
Blanchard (2011) digs a little deeper to find a solution how to best approach ROI in social
media. Some useful tips are amongst them that give businesses and agencies some form of
indication as to how to start with approaching ROI sentiments in social media:
1. Start with a baseline: It is vital to start from a certain period and this normally
comes with a budget and can be at the campaigns start, starting of a measuring
period etc. (Blanchard 2011).
2. Timelines: Timelines are crucial to any marketing department, it is vital that all
departments are in communication with each other, from PR to merchandise as
these can increase traffic and cause campaign pecks or slow downs. Changes in
pricing strategies for instance can influence sales figures. Timelines assist in
understanding the overarching strategy and keeping reporting and plotted
activities tight (Blanchard 2011).
3. Listen and monitor the volume of mentions: Social media provides the luxury
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to listen to launches, active campaigns, get opinions on the latest organizations
advertising or product. These sentiments can be tracked by the ORM monitoring
tools and can breakdown a detailed mention of volume by channel. Gathering
information what people like and dislike can change strategies, products or
services and marketing communication messages to suit customers (Blanchard
2011).
4. Measuring the transactional precursors: Any transaction that falls under the
description of: web analytics, fans and followers, shares, likes, recommendations,
comments, requests, sign ups, RSS subscriptions, email sign ups, registrations of
competitions and so on (Blanchard 2011).
5. Transactional data: These are the hard figures and sales volumes. It might also be
feasible to view the net number of transactions/receipts (Blanchard 2011).
6. Overlaying all data onto a single dashboard or timeline: All activities, from TV,
radio, PR, price increase, new store opening etc. needs to be mapped together
with social media data, web data, loyalty metrics, all non transactional data,
transactional and financial outcomes data and all other relevant data that might
affect the campaign during that time (Blanchard 2011).
ROI finds its value not only in business measurement equation and program validation tools,
but also as a diagnostic tool within the program itself (Blanchard 2011).
In the article by Turner (2010), adds that most companies are not doing an effective job of
measuring the value of their social media campaigns. He strongly suggests that if social
media campaigns are not measured by using ROI, they are being set up for failure. Turner
(2010) has a three step solution to measure social media.
1. Quantitative Metrics: These are data and number oriented. It is important to
pick the key metrics that influence and drive your business. These include:
page views, unique visits, followers, demographics, frequency, bounce rate,
length of visit and any other data bound metric.
2. Qualitative Metrics: These address the emotional components such as 75% of
people who mention your product online call it “cheap” or 25% call it
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“inexpensive”. Nielsen and Adobe online marketing suite provide the in-depth
analysis of the qualitative metrics online. This is part of online reputation
management.
3. ROI Metrics: This is measuring the return on investment. Here you can track
what percentage of people converted from a prospect to a customer on an e-
commerce site, or how many people converted from a prospect on a B2B
website. This percentage will give ROI.
However as Turner (2010), explains there is another dimension of measurement which is the
Customer Lifetime Value cycle (CLV). This is the basic measure of the amount of revenue a
customer will bring to a company over a course of their lifetime with a brand.
Once the value of a CLV is clear, it is a social media managers job to decide how much to
invest to acquire a customer. Many use 10% of their CLV as a starting point for the allowable
cost per sale. The key point to acquire new customers through a social media marketing
platform is to drive people to a landing page where they can convert prospects to a paying
customer.
Even though ROI in social media is still a hot debated topic, the calculations are simple, but
the data collection, collaboration with other business units and monitoring social media
sentiments take dedicated time and an eye for detail and analytical understanding.
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CHAPTER 3
3. METHODOLOGY & RESEARCH DESIGN
3.1 INRODUCTION
This chapter discusses the framework and methodology that was adopted for this study. The
purpose of the research methods in this chapter is to answer the research questions:
a. How effectively can companies/businesses measure social media marketing and ROI?
b. What should social media measure and deliver?
c. How does social media capture value in organizations?
This particular chapter examines the research approach used for the study, its strengths and
weaknesses and research limitations. This chapter also discusses the collection of data and
an outline on how the research was conducted. This chapter also outlines the various
research methodologies used to understand the role of social media ROI and its value add in
business today.
3.2 RESEARCH DESIGN
Research design provides an overall plan for data collection and its interpretation. It also
allows for solving research questions in the best possible way, with research limitations
(Ghauri & Gronhaug 2005). In this thesis I mainly had time constrains and budget constraints
and this limited the number of participants in the research questionnaire.
The research design of this thesis is exploratory and causal approach of the problem
situation.
As Ghauri and Gronhaug (2005) explain, the causal approach is confronted with the main
task of the research to isolate the cause(s), and tell whether or not to what extent they
correlate to result(s) or effect(s). The research question is social media effective? Or what
should social media deliver? are questions that are searching for the cause and effect. An
important question is often whether an observed correlation coefficient, such as between
46
advertising spend and sales, is a ‘true’ one, or whether the co variation changes or
disappears when controlling for other factors, for example size of the market or type of
product. The research design is trying to measure the ‘effect’ of the social media ‘cause’ that
it has on a brand or organization. Furthermore the exploratory research was used in this
thesis as it involved literature search, online surveys and interviews conducted. It was also
used to bring a broader focus and can provide specific answers to specific research
questions.
3.3 RESEARCH APPROACH
“Data analysis is the process of bringing order, structure and meaning to the mass of
collected data.”
-Marshall & Rossman-
The most appropriate way to analyze the research questions of this thesis is by using the
means of qualitative research methodology. The qualitative research is the best formulation
that supports this thesis research question, which requires a holistic outlook. This method
allows for its application to a specific context, valid interpretations and understanding
gained from thorough literature studies. The thesis is willing to identify the value of social
media marketing in business as well as the importance of ROI and measurability.
Ghauri and Gronhaug (2005), explain that there are three main components of qualitative
research:
• Data: often collected through interviews and observations.
• Interpretative or analytical procedure: the techniques to conceptualize and
analyze the data to arrive at findings or theories.
• Report: written or verbal report of findings.
The reason I have chosen the Qualitative methodology of research is that it is exploratory,
unstructured, holistic in nature and will best be applied to understand the value that social
media plays in organizations. It is also used as it is rich and full of unstructured content and it
also allows for assessing causality in organizational affairs rather than old methodologies.
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The Harvard Education (2010) journal reports qualitative research by describing it to be
descriptive reports of individuals, perceptions, attitude, beliefs, views and feelings, the
meanings and interpretations given to events and things, as well as their behaviours.
Qualitative research focuses on the emphasis of the study of phenomena from an insider
perspective, and seeks to find what works best or which variable best explain a particular
result. It is a detailed study investigative approach study that involves intermixes of both
quantitative and qualitative observation methods; however the assumptions concerning
general views of the research are distinctly different from those of quantitative research
(Lapan et al. 2012). Furthermore, qualitative research is guided by distinct views and
researchers identify to see meaning as socially constructed. Qualitative research can be
carried out through case studies, interviews with people who have relevant experiences and
observations in the places where study participant’s work, live, shop etc. (Lapan et al. 2012).
With the qualitative research observation method process I was able to assess social media
tools and understand the social media environment and how companies can track these
from a financial ROI perspective.
3.4 ANALYSIS AND PRESENTATION OF DATA
The following sub-chapters identify the type of data that was used in this research paper.
Both primary and secondary data was collected, analyzed and presented.
Most of qualitative researchers usually perform to more than just one practice of study to
guarantee reliability and depth of understanding regarding the research topic. Due to this, I
have used different holistic forms of multiple sources of data. The primary data collection
was a short online survey that was conducted as well as interviews with social media experts
from both agencies and businesses. Primary data refers to data that is generated by a
researcher, whereas secondary data exists irrespective of the researcher’s actions or
intentions (Ghauri & Gronhaug 2005).
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In the Harvard Business Manager, Nichols (2013) raised an important article in April 2013,
about judging the effectiveness of advertising and marketing. According to Nichols (2013)
who addresses the point that the American author of statistics Nate Silver made, which:
“Every second we produce three times as much data and information as the library of
congress … most of it is useless information. That means, without data analysis and data
filter it is impossible to get an outcome.”
The research and presentation of the collection of all data, was analysed and interpreted
with a structured outcome of tools and best practices in the minds of social experts and
secondary data collection.
3.4.1 DATA COLLECTION METHODS
In data collection, archival research involves using secondary data or library source data to
help understand the history of a study site (Lapan et al. 2012).
In this research I have used both secondary and primary data collection in order to map
commonalties and understand the subject matter better.
The study was conducted over a three-month period, the timeframe to complete this thesis.
This included the implementation of the online survey that included open questions about
social media marketing, and how experts are using the medium and how to measure value.
Five interviews focusing on social media measurement and value where conducted to gain
deeper insights into how social marketing is valued for businesses.
In the case of this study, I have primarily used interview data as well as online survey
information to deeper understands how companies, be it agencies or businesses feel about
social media as a value and how it is best measured.
3.4.2 ONLINE SURVEY
According to Ghauri and Gronhaug (2005), first steps are to identify what questions to ask in
a questionnaire. It is also important however to make sure that the length of the
questionnaire is appropriate for respondents to answer.
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The research began with a pre-study questionnaire with 10 questions addressing the subject
social media; measuring tools, as well as the value and objectives it brings to agencies and
companies alike. There were overall 20 participants who took part in the online survey. The
Pre-study could easily be reported by the means of producing it on the online survey
(www.surveymonkey.com) and the data was exported and analyzed. Thematic patterns
where observed and analyzed to form a better understanding of what companies and social
media experts are doing to measure and how they use social media marketing. At this point
it is also important to note that this study was done on the internet and social media experts
globally where asked to complete the survey. The pre-study questionnaire had participants
from all over the world and does not focus on a particular bias. The questionnaire was only
sent to marketing experts, or people in the industry who understand social media marketing
and have worked in the field for more than 1 year.
3.4.3 INTERVIEWS
I have used two of the described typology interview methods Ghauri and Gronhaug (2005) in
my data collection approach.
There are different forms of interviews; I have chosen the telephonic and electronic
interview method. Electronic interviews use the form of electronic communication facilities
to access and communicate with participants. The interviews can be held online, in real time
using the Internet or it can be offline, using e-mail communication (Cassell and Symon 2004).
In this research I used the methodology of e-mail form interviews as well as used platforms
like LinkeIn to source the right participants for the interview, by searching amongst the
networks of people who are already working in social media and are familiar with the
subject and who are experts in the field.
Interviews can either be structured or unstructured in nature. Structured interviews are
where a standard format is used with emphasis on fixed response categories. The advantage
of structured interviews is that it measures a uniformity of questions. Unstructured
interview on the other hand allow the respondent at full liberty to discuss reactions,
opinions and behaviour on a particular issue. The main advantage in the unstructured
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interview is that the researcher/interviewer who is well educated with the subject can enrich
data and lead the discussion to an interesting point (Ghauri and Gronhaug 2005).
The method of using interview as part of research requires the researcher to find the right
people to interview. Sampling used in this study was to find out a variety of expert
experience and also to find similarities amongst the cases interviewed (Flick 2007).
In the time frame available for this thesis I conducted expert interviews with individuals from
Germany and South Africa. The purpose of the interviews was to provide substantial support
for the academic and theoretic social media literature as well as to validate assumptions
introduced in the literature review. As the topic of social media ROI is growing, the
interviews provided a deeper understanding into the struggles and challenges that
companies and agencies are faced with. The interviews have provided practical, expert
insights into answering the proposed research questions. Interviews also function as tools to
support observations and data collection.
With the evidence presented in the literature findings and interviews, as well as on the
online survey, my data analysis was aimed to extract commonalities and best practices.
Due to the distance and time constraints for some social media experts, the interview
questions were already structured for them to answer per email, whilst others where
interviewed with telephone calls, resulting in the questions becoming more open and the
approach became more of a conversational style.
All interviews followed the same structure and theme in questions based on:
• Social media marketing
• Social media ROI
• Social media tracking tools
The interviews that were conducted over the telephone, where in English and German and
all interviews were recorded and transcribed according to data recording methods and as
well as notes were also taken. Figure 12, suggests the criteria selection and responsibilities
of each selected interviewee.
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Figure 12: Interview selection criteria and type of interview conducted
The qualitative research conducted, respected the participant’s wishes not to be named and
stayed anonymous, honouring the statements and promises to ensure participants are not
harmed or their names tarnished.
3.4.4 PRIMARY AND SECONDARY DATA
The first distinction between primary and secondary data is that, primary data is original
data collected by the researcher for the research problem at hand and the secondary data is
information collected by others from different sources (Ghauri and Gronhaug 2005).
Secondary data is very useful to gain deeper understanding into a subject and usually begins
with the literature review on the subject and material is collected by the means of using
books, journals, online data available and the like. Advantages using secondary data lie in
that it assists in time saving. It also allows for cross-cultural/international research, as it is
easier to compare similar data from different countries. Disadvantages using secondary data
are that they address a different problem than what the researcher is asking. Secondary data
is also often not easy to classify and is sometimes difficult to measure (Ghauri and Gronhaug
2005).
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Primary data is available to answer the particular research question; normally these include
observations, experiments, surveys and interviews. Advantages of primary data are that they
are relevant and collected for the particular study at hand. Disadvantages of primary data
are that it is difficult to access, find a consumer, companies or other target groups who are
willing to participate (Ghauri and Gronhaug 2005).
In this particular research thesis, I have used both primary and secondary data as seen in
Figure 13. The primary data collection assisted in answering the right questions to the topic
at hand whilst the secondary data, provided important observations from social networking
platforms, other expert journals, news clips, books and reviews to gain a better
understanding of the subject.
Figure 13: Data collection and sources used
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3.5 DATA INTERPRETATION
There are several different approaches when analysing qualitative data. Coding and
categorizing are ways to analyze all forms of data and are not focused on a specific method. I
have used several parts of the data and compared them with other data by naming and
classifying them. By using this process, a structure is developed as a step towards a
comprehensive understanding of the issue, the field, and the data itself (Flick 2004).
According to Ghauri and Gronhaug (2005), and as stated by Marshall and Rossman
(1995:111), ‘data analysis is the process of bringing order, structure and meaning to the
mass of collected data.’ In this research paper I have used the form of data reduction, which
according to (Ghauri and Gronhaug 2005), refers to the process of selecting, focusing,
simplifying, abstracting and transforming the data that appears in interviews or field work.
Furthermore I have also tried to grasp the meanings of others, and with the data collected
presented insights and understanding of the subject. I have identified some unified themes
throughout the research and found common threads.
By using codes and categories for analyzing qualitative data one is quite flexible in the sort of
data to be used and how the study is designed (Flick 2004). In this case I am analyzing and
finding similarities amongst the research data collected.
3.6 RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY
Reliability refers to the stability of a measure taken in research. External validity relates to
the extent the findings can be generalized to particular persons, settings and times, as well
as across people, settings and times (Ghauri & Gronhaug 2005).
As Golafshani (2003), describes, reliability is the extent to which results are consistent over
time and an accurate presentation of the total population. According to the article
Consistency in questionnaires is attributed to stability in research studies. When consulting
stable measures, the results should be similar. According to Golafshani (2003), journal that
quotes Joppe (2000), validity; is determined by whether the research truly measures that
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which it was intended to measure. Due to the fact that I used a qualitative approach to
better understand and interpret the value of social media marketing in business, it is
uncommon that the research findings will be that of a common thread.
According to S.B Thomson (2011), the theoretical validity is described as going beyond just
concrete descriptions and interpretations, but also addresses the theoretical construct that
the researcher researched. The theoretical validity uses patterns, concepts, categories,
properties and dimensions that fit together as a whole. Overall, through theoretical validity
this study is vilified as it focuses on interview and surveys where meanings might differ,
however concepts might be the same. Same questions have been asked in the survey to the
relevant sample group of experts.
Reliability in qualitative research according to Silverman (2006) is simply using standardized
methods to write field notes, conduct interview and textual studies. This research is unique
and authentic and to diminish reliability issues, the research methods and findings have
been carefully described. This study can be repeated, however due to the research subjects
and interviews used, it might differ in interpretation.
3.7 LIMITATIONS AND BIASES
All research conducted have limitations, and qualitative research also provides limitations to
this study. Research methods are mainly exploring an idea and concept and not fully finished
ideas and many things can change along the way. Qualitative research seeks to understand
what the respondent meant and not what the future might predict (Wardle 2004).
The social media landscape is changing at a rapid rate, every day new social networking sites
appear, new ways of measurements are developed and the internet is at its peak of
explosion. The research field of trying to define ROI in social media is a debate that is still
required for further research. The scope of the thesis, data analyzed and findings require
further investigation as it is clear that the ROI and value of social media marketing is a hot
debated topic of interest both for marketers and advertisers. This study is trying to really
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understand holistically the value social media brings to companies, and tries to set a
simplified framework for the measurability and implementation of social media marketing
strategies. Overall this study is aiming to de-cluster and simplify the social media marketing
approach for companies and agencies a like.
Through the research and interviews conducted, time limitations unfortunately hindered
further understanding to what social media experts are saying about the topic and to gain
further insights into understanding the role social media plays in ever day business. There is
room for further research on the subject matter, and surprisingly benchmarks have not been
established when it comes to social media measurements.
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4. FINDINGS
This chapter presents the findings from the primary data study of the interviews conducted
as well as the pre-study survey performed. The information is presented and organized
according to the main theme ideas of how to answer the research questions:
Figure: 14 Research findings
4.1 SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE
By using a holistic approach, I was able to gain helpful insights into the online survey
conducted as to what the main efforts of a social media marketing platforms are mostly used
for. As expected the majority of candidates used the following platforms: Facebook, Twitter,
YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest and Instagram as their top social media marketing
engagements.
Best social media sites are practiced amongst: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and LinkedIn.
However amongst the findings of the interviews conducted with social media experts, most
mentioned that the platforms are often dependent on the business objectives.
Other platforms, that might be interesting for marketers is Myspace.
Myspace, have in recent months re-branded itself and is now trying to connect with the
Generation Y audience by the means of introducing music themes, celebrities, TV, movies
and games as part of their platform (Hines 2013).
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Figure: 15 Survey answer: What social media do you use in your social media marketing campaign?
4.2 SOCIAL MEDIA MEASUREMENT METRICS
According to the online survey conducted when asked the question: what marketers wish to
accomplish through social media and how they plan measuring success; I could identify
patterns of responses that were similar. The cluster of responses confirmed below, that
most of the responses that were found are of brand awareness and community building
exercise online.
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Based on the survey findings, most marketers and social media experts predominantly
measured success of social media campaigns with brand awareness as their first gage of
success followed by engagement and sales conversion.
Figure: 16 Survey Answer: How do you determine and measure the right social media campaign to reach your
goals?
Interestingly most social media campaigns are not directly being measured of their ROI or
sales conversions and most sentiments are on reach of a brand online.
4.3 MEASURING ROI
The results from the interviews of the experts, talk extensively about the ROI in social media
and how campaigns can be measured. Success of social media can mean many things
according to the experts interviewed:
Expert A, talks about that: “There are different ways to receive a return from a financial
perspective, for example to run a promotional campaign, whereby clicks and a purchase can
clearly be tracked online will be able to give you a clear measure to what was invested and
your ROI. However what social media marketing sometimes cannot measure is the smaller
effect that it has on branding and awareness.”
Expert B states that: “The best way to measure ROI of social media marketing is to relate
social actions to your business outcomes in order to determine ROI. I.e. you need to decide
the metrics to use that are most important to your business, like ‘customer health’ can be
measured via retention metrics, and reduction in costs (as an indicator of ROI) can be
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measured by the efficiencies in engaging in social media vs. real world like answering calls.”
Expert B concludes to the question; if ROI is the right measure for success the following way:
“no, it depends on the overall objective or goal. E.g. if customer health is the goal, then
things like sentiment ratio’s are more indicative.”
On the subject EXPERT C comments:” The best way to measure is to understand the spend
versus the returns which are measured based on the objectives of the campaign, e.g. the
increased of awareness of a new offering, driving traffic to the site and conversions,
increased followers or likes, etc…” and on if ROI is the right measure : “I think it’s the best
way to provide the statistical evidence to the business that social media is a key factor in the
success of a campaign and can be used to justify increased focus, increased budgets or
additional resources. But this all depends on the correct benchmarks or targets being
defined up front.”
EXPERT D on the ROI subject mentions: “I would like to measure the amount of revenue
generated.” And on the subject of ROI being the right measure for social media EXPERT D
comments: “Yes. Who cares how many people read or shared your article? For example, we
had a tax client that had their budget speech infographics shared, but it was all university
students who shared it, not their target market.”
The responses by the research data conducted conclude that social media ROI is a financial
measure that can only be determined by pre-defined objectives. However there are other
measures such as such as brand awareness and reach that might be a more tedious task to
measure.
Another common thread was the sentiment of measuring progress in social media, here the
answered differed slightly from some mentioning: increased interactions, share of voice ROI
sales, measurements through comments, follows and re-tweets as well as that social media
becomes an essential element in the sales loop measured by conversions. Even though most
answered where vague, the common thread seems to be that through increased
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interactions, marketers would like to measure success. However having mentioned this, it is
also clear at this point that everyone’s answers even though holistically had a common
thread, each tracks and measures success differently. Although this seems obvious, as
different businesses cater for different needs, some wish to be heard and just present,
others engage more and even entice promotions to be able to calculate a solid set of ROI
results.
As per the literature review and interviews conducted with experts, ROI is a measure that
clearly needs to be defined before any campaign or social media engagement. ROI still
seems to be a good indicator and important measuring device especially when it can be
tracked from a campaign perspective.
4.4 SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS & TECHNOLOGY
Many popular monitoring tools are either free of charge and come with the website provider
such as Facebook, with their Facebook insights, whilst others are paid forms of
measurement tools. The main aim gage is that it is spread equally, and many use free as well
as paid measuring tools to track conversations online.
The online survey, revealed the most popular listening, monitoring tools that are currently
being used:
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Figure: 17 Survey Answer: What measuring tools/technologies are you using to monitor conversation?
Furthermore, the findings in the interviews conducted inferred to the following outcomes.
EXPERT A: “Facebook insights, Google Analytics, Adobe and Omniture have recently brought
out social media tracking tools. There are obviously other tools out there; predominantly we
also use other tracking tools like Google trends and analytics to track the increase in traffic
to our website etc. Free tools can bring you far, however if a business is using social media a
lot, it might be best to use tools such as Adobe or Omniture who will cater for your business
objectives and give a more in-depth look into campaigns and conversion.”
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EXPERT B: “Tracking tools are Radian6 and he recommends Hootsuite on the lower end
(free) tool whilst Radian6 on the upper end.”
EXPERT C: “Is mainly using free tools that the sites offer to track usage. This is due to the fact
that the company doesn’t have a budget available for the more expensive tracking tools.
We’re using analytics to track visits to the site from social media and the call centre to gauge
how users hear about the company. Otherwise it’s currently quite a manual process to check
the number of likes, shares, followers and posts.”
EXPERT D: mentions that “tools that allow you to track leads converting to customers.
Having lots of readers and massive reach is not much use. It is the same as PPC advertising-
You can have lots of clicks, but that is not the use if they don’t convert to customers. I track
with social media channels and rich content produces the most qualified leads and focus
efforts on these.
We use Hubspot, Marketo or Pardot. None of our customers have been able to afford
Eloqua. There are social media specific tools, but I don’t find these useful – I need to
generate revenue not reach.”
Every business is using their own tools and technologies based on budget and taste.
4.4.1 SOCIAL MEDIA BENCHMARKS
In order to understand and measure ROI and KPI benchmarks, I have asked the experts on
what they think are industry benchmarks in social media.
EXPERT A: “Depending on the industry that you are in, a ‘like’ for example will not give you a
sale in the automotive industry and immediate effects on the purchase behaviour will not be
seen…you can use different channels like TV, radio etc. To reach your customers, and I can
also measure how many people I have reached through the various marketing
communication mixes. Benchmarking is difficult and is different from industry to industry.”
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EXPERT B: “I think category specific benchmarks are better than general i.e. Insurance clients
typically have 75% complaints ratio (positive to negative comments). Where as Banking is
more like 50%.”
EXPERT C: “We’re looking at Alexa.com to track other sites to benchmark our activities. We’ll
also be looking at hootsuit and tweetdeck going forwards.”
EXPERT D: “We use a 3% conversion ratio – we make sure that all readers are driven to a
website and we meant to get a 3% conversion.”
Category specific, it is hard to benchmark within the parameters of measuring social media
marketing and ROI. In conclusion, it seems difficult to measure success by just looking at
financial returns and not non-financial. According to experts, ROI can be measured and
somewhat benchmarked; however it is depended on the company’s objectives to really
measure ROI in social media. The findings demonstrate how ROI in social media is
understood as a concept but no one definition rules. In return this makes ROI in social media
difficult to justify to the board or stakeholder as such and dedicate more budgets to the
medium. Measuring the right metrics in the realm of social media is complex and not always
defined. Through literature and the online survey and marketers a like, they are aware that
not everything is measurable even though social media and online environments tend to
make measurability way easier than traditional marketing.
4.5 SOCIAL MEDIA IN ORGANIZATIONS
According to the online survey conducted, when asked about social media in organizations, I
also tackled the challenge of asking about how social media as a marketing campaign are
measured. The results confirm that they are still very much measured separately from the
overall marketing campaign and strategy.
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Figure: 18 Survey Answer: Do you track social media campaigns separately from your marketing mix?
Furthermore, research was conducted with the Experts, if measuring marketing department
success this is mainly done in silos of each department or do they see a need to measure all
campaigns and activities done for marketing. The findings are as follows.
EXPERT A: “We can also see this in other countries, that this whole measurement, especially
with campaign planning and the tracking will be measured together at some point. What
influenced what and when. How much of social media you will use in a marketing campaign
and mix is dependent on who you wish to target. But in general yes, marketing activities will
need to be more integrated in the future.”
EXPERT B mentions that: “No ideally the more integration the better. Social usually is a
mirror of all business activities i.e. people talked about ad campaigns on social and these
needs to reflect back at campaign planning for alterations.”
EXPERT C findings where: “I view social media as an integral part of measuring the total
success of a campaign and should be tracked hand in hand with other initiatives e.g. TV.
Therefore as long as the ROI is set correctly for social media it is a good measure.”
Overall as many research and literature reviews reveal, is that overall social media has
become an integral part to a business, not only from a campaign perspective but also from
an overall business and its business functions.
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4.5.1 SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE FUTURE
Predicaments of the role of social media in the future are two-fold. Some argue that it will
grow and will become an integral part of business, whilst others believe it will stay a medium
for marketing purposes with new platforms making their way as well as new tablets, and
through phone technologies will seek new heights. The experts where asked about, what
role social media will play in the future and how online tracking tools in the future will be
used, measured.
EXPERT A: “The internet and the social media wave is an important part of any business in
the future does not matter in which industry you are in. Social media will carry on and
companies need to integrate their business more in that direction. The challenge is for
companies to stay relevant and utilize the different platforms available such as social media
and mobile in the future. It is also important to combine the physical trade with the digital
trade and network these because in some trades, you cannot purchase online yet, however
the trend will be that companies will but more budget towards integration of traditional and
digital.“
EXPERT B: “The trend is consolidation. The likes of SAP, Adobe, IBM, and Google are all
buying up toolsets and integrating them into their existing offering to bolster their offerings.
In the future social is going to be how we do business. Like the fax, like the telephone, like
the email, it’s just how we are going to do everyday business.”
EXPERT C: “I think social media tracking is going to become even more important over time,
especially as users move away from engaging with call centres and retail stores and engage
more with companies using social media. The tools available at the moment require a lot of
attention from the marketing manage. So I think there’s going to be more of a need for in-
house social media specialists to run and measure social marketing campaigns or outsource
this to their media agency. Roles in social media in the future are as social media becomes
more mainstream and users expect companies to communicate and engage with them
online, more time, effort, budget and resources will need to be invested into social media
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marketing than ever before.”
EXPERT D: “I think it is going to get noisier with more companies doing content marketing.
We going to need some further filtering tools. It is going to be very important. But brands
have to earn their presence not to buy it.”
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5. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
5.1 CONCLUSION
This research paper has set out to investigate and discover the value of Social Media as well
as the effectiveness and measurability of ROI. In order to understand ROI in business and
how it can best deliver, one needs to understand the business objectives as well as the
overall strategy a company wishes to accomplish. As Lovett (2011), best describes it that
social media is a challenging and rewarding exercise. The real challenge is to identify the
right metrics that matter to your business. It is also about collaborating with stakeholders,
other marketing channels used, educate about the potential of social media as well as find
the right technological tools and ultimately quantify the impact of social media efforts
(Lovett 2011).
This research does not test theories, nor does it provide new theoretical abstractions. It has
a purpose of gaining deeper understanding how social media ROI is measured by experts in
the industry as well as how social media is adapted and how it adds value to an overall
marketing strategy.
There is still, a significant lack of theoretical contribution when it comes to social media and
its ROI. Even though social media must be treated as a separate platform, the latest
development is to combine all marketing channels. There is a growing need to track
campaigns and impact of branding throughout marketing channels. Social media provides
companies and users abundant of different platforms and therefore dissimilar measurement
metrics need to be taken into consideration. Ever single platform needs to be treated
differently and there is no formula that fits all. Research data, validates that marketers
understand the difficult dynamics of this and marketing strategies are viewed from a holistic
point of view.
It is significant that business and marketing objectives are often not tied together.
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Social media still needs a complete, standardized performance measurement of ROI that
delivers an overview similar to traditional marketing activities such as: Television, radio,
magazines and the like. It is not just a marketing platform; it is a conversation not just one
on one, but one to many. Companies can benefit greatly from the positive impact/reach and
brand awareness social media provides to a business.
5.2 RECOMMENDATIONS
The current measurement practices in social media rely on tracking measurements and
‘click’ functions such as number of “likes”, number of click throughs and the number of
views. As the research implies, the most important metrics for measuring ROI are brand
awareness and lift, number of sales generates and the number of shares and reposts. There
approaches are all just; however by quantifying these effects no-one is measuring the effects
it has on branding over time and space. The endurance of a Twitter feed is very short,
depending on how many people you follow, whereas an endurance of a YouTube clip has a
longer staying power as people rate it, share it and continue to do so over a longer period of
time than for example a tweet.
It seems that there is a two-fold wave of marketing activities, one that is destined to
generate immediate sales and another that is focused on increasing awareness. The benefits
of social media marketing are that it lifts brand awareness due to its vast reach of
communities and engages with customers. Through careful listening tools and technology
social media can identify brand ambassadors and enhance branding through building
interactive communities whereby consumers can engage and interact with brands. Social
media also has the potential for innovation for brands; Adidas and Nike for example have
listened through social media networks and could identify a need for customization of shoes.
Both brands successfully implemented a platform whereby customers can build their own
shoe, with their favourite colours etc. This has developed a form of revenue for the business
that would otherwise not have easily been identified. Furthermore, social media is
enhancing a brand through its vast reach and how it in the long term is building communities
and rewards loyal customers.
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Social media as such also has two dimensions:
• A multiplying effect of a group of fans or the online community
• Persistence of the message transmitted (e.g. “re-tweets”, “shares”, “likes”)
In the social media world, businesses have the potential to speak to their customers and
they in return have the potential to share and spread the message to thousands of people
through their networks. This is a big potential of earned media, almost like a free media
advertisement with a multiplication effect. An advertisement in a magazine will be seen by X
number of subscribers to the magazine and will have a marginal multiplication effect. A
simple tweet of a business reacting or rewarding a loyal customer will have an ample
multiplication effect at a period of time (twitter feed). YouTube for example is probably one
of the best mediums, as it has both multiplication effects and endurance to be shared and
viewed for a long period of time.
Assessing the effects and benefits of social media expenditure is very important, however I
recommend shifting the approach from the quest of the lost ROI towards analysing the
multiplying effects and the endurance when assessing and evaluating social media marketing
options. I believe that digital technology and social media has changed this landscape and
one should really assess the potential of this great medium. It is not always about immediate
short term ROI, but a long term multiplying effect it has on brand awareness and reach.
Word-of-mouth is a new form of currency, it is not only about listening, but collecting
relevant customer data in order to effectively, bring target messages to customers at the
right time, which will share their positive experience and share their experience with their
community.
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LIST OF RESOURCES CONSULTED
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Social-Media-Tauglich warden. Business Village Gmbh Göttingen.
• Book: Olivier Branchard (2011), Social Media ROI – Managing and Measuring
Social Media Efforts in Your Organization. Que Publishing
• Book: Alastair Campbell (2003) Branding: brand strategy, design and
implementation of corporate and product identity. Cassell Illustrated and The Ilex
Press limited.
• Book: Catherine Cassell & Gillian Symon (2004). Essential Guide to Qualitative
Methods in Organizational Research. Sage Publications
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media, blogs, new releases, online video, and viral marketing to reach buyers
directly. 2nd Edition. John Wiley & Sohns Inc.
• Book: Dave Evans (2012), Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day. Willey pages
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your marketing investment. John Wiley & Sons inc.
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Palgrave Macmillan 1741-2439. Database Marketing & Customer Strategy
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15.06.2013]http://www.iab.net/guidelines/508676/801817/socialmetrics
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Group
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Sarrazin (2012), Marketing & Sales practice,“Demystifying social media”.
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credit it deserves”.
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Investment”. http://www.forbes.com/sites/capitalonespark/2013/04/25/how-to-
measure-your-social-media-return-on-investment/
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(2012) http://www.cmosurvey.org/blog/social-media-spend-continues-to-soar/
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Indiana University (2010) 53, 59-68
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%20Users%20of%20the%20world,%20unite.pdf
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practices http://www.nielsen.com/content/dam/corporate/us/en/reports-
downloads/2013%20Reports/Nielsen-Paid-Social-Media-Adv-Report-2013.pdf
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Reports/The-Social-Media-Report-2012.pdf
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Bruich, Measurement Reach, Facebook (2010): Advertising Effectiveness:
Understanding the Value of a Social Media Impression
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Reports/Social-Media-Impressions-Facebook-2010.pdf
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element of the promotion mix. Business Horizons (2009) 52, 357-365
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Altimeter (2013): The evolution of Social Business Six Stages of Social Business
Transformation. http://gregjordandesign.com/blog/social-media-maturity/
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2012 BRITE/NYAMA Marketing in Transition Study. Columbia Business School, Center
on global brand leadership. http://www.iab.net/media/file/2012-BRITE-NYAMA-
Marketing-ROI-Study.pdf
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on Same Footing as Traditional Media. Marketing Evolution, Telmar Believe Effects
Can Be Predicted, Accountable Like Other Media. Published June 2011.
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roi/227911/
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e_history.html
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Monitoring, Analytics, and Management. Posted May 13, 2013.
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http://www.briansolis.com/2010/08/roi-doesnt-mean-return-on-ignorance/
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best practices 2013.
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downloads/2013%20Reports/Nielsen-Paid-Social-Media-Adv-Report-2013.pdf
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Plymouth, 2006. http://www.edu.plymouth.ac.uk
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campaign. Mashable http://mashable.com/2010/11/05/calculate-roi-social-media/
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Qualitative Research. http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR8-4/golafshani.pdf .
University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
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properly valid and reliable? The University of Warwick.
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• Website: S.B Thomson (2011), Qualitative Research: Validity. JOAAG Vol. 6, No.1
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Need to know.http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/new-myspace/
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APPENDIX 1- ONLINE SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE
Online survey Question 1:
Online survey Question 2:
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Online survey Question 3:
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Online survey Question 4:
Online survey Question 5:
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Online survey Question 6:
Online survey Question 7:
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Online survey Question 8:
Online survey Question 9:
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Online survey Question 10:
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APPENDIX 2- INTERVIEW QUESTIONNAIRE
Questionnaire and Interview of the topic
Capturing the value of Social media marketing
Focusing on ROI
Answered by EXPERT A. Social Media Expert in Germany
Wednesday, 29 May 2013 10:30 AM
1. What do you hope to accomplish through social media for your clients and how do
you plan to measure progress?
First of all the how we measure success is to make sure we understand what the
client is looking for, if the customer is seeking a specific audience, then we look at the
audience to see where they are present. It can be tracked through various
2. How have you gone about assessing which social media tracking tools might be of
value or appropriate for your clients/companies use?
Facebook insights, Google Analytics, Adobe and Omniture are using social tracking
tools. There are obviously other tools out there; predominantly we also use other
tracking tools like Google trends and analytics to track the increase in traffic to our
website etc. Free tools can bring you far, however if a business is using social media a
lot, it might be best to use tools such as Adobe or Omniture who will cater for your
business objectives and give a more in-depth look into campaigns and conversion.
3. Where do you get the information from the measuring tools?
When you are in the business and industry, you learn fairly quickly about new tools
on the market. I have contacts with various agencies and get insights from them on
new tools available.
4. What in your mind are the best measuring tools?
This all depends on the business and what it wishes to accomplish.
5. Are there any industry benchmarks against which to measure your social media
practices?
Depending on the industry that you are in, a ‘like’ for example will not give you a sale
in the automotive industry and immediate effects on the purchase behaviour will
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not be seen…you can use different channels like TV, radio etc. to reach your
customers, and I can also measure how many people I have reached through the
various marketing communication mixes. Benchmarking is difficult and is different
from industry to industry.
6. How important is social media marketing seen in companies, is it an essential part of
the marketing mix?
Social media is an important instrument, but just a part of the marketing mix, again
depends on the target audience and what product you wish to sell. Social media is an
important mix that evokes interest, awareness and information about a product.
With having said that, with a premium manufacturer, it is just one part of the overall
marketing strategy. Because the target audience is differently orientated, it is not
that likely when you are a premium brand that your target audience will be best
reached through social media only. But I am confident that this media will grow in
the future even for premium brands.
7. What is the best way to measure the ROI of social media marketing?
Reach can be tracked well in social media; however you can for sure measure success
when you used social media as a promotional tool and item. The measurement in
terms of brand awareness is more difficult to measure; I can very badly measure
what channel creates brand awareness for example. The question lies in what you
wish to measure to get concrete results from your investment. But sometimes the
pure financial numbers are not the best forms of measurement in social media,
because it is also about how many people are my fans, where can I influence these
and what are people talking about me. It is not only about the ROI, but also the reach
and how people are engaging with my brand. If after 3 years no one is talking about
my brand but I could measure my ROI, that is simply not the purpose of social media.
8. Is it relevant to have dedicated people who will track brand engagement in your
company? Do you need to track what are competitors doing and do you need a full
time person dedicated to social media in your business?
Depending on the industry, yes it is useful because we are now no longer in a phase
of experimenting with social media. Many companies have made their experiences
with the various social media platforms, and now the point is what reach can be
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achieved with what channels. Also in terms of the measurement of ROI, it will be
increasingly important but it will also take some time until some established
benchmarks will be used.
9. In the Harvard Business manager April 2013, ‘Werbung, die wirkt!’ discusses how
companies are often measuring different marketing activities in silos. For example:
The digital department tracks their online activities separately to that of the
traditional marketing department who tracks Radio, TV, magazines differently and
hence budgets and success is just dedicated to silos. Do you think it is necessary to
integrate media mixes and stop viewing these from a silo perspective? Are essentially
online tracking tools more to listen and engage, rather than ROI?
We can also see this in other countries, that this whole measurement, especially with
campaign planning and the tracking will be measured together at some point. What
influenced what and when. How much of social media you will use in a marketing
campaign and mix is dependent on who you wish to target. But in general yes,
marketing activities will need to be more integrated in the future.
10. How do you foresee the future of social media online tracking? Are new tools
available? What is the latest trend?
The information used in social media will in future be use more often for marketing
purposes, to allow for personalization of adverts and relevant content. Depending on
hobby, interest’s etc. marketers will have the ability to target through personalization
more relevant people. More personalized and individual information will be used to
market customers.
11. What do you think of CRM, are companies using the vast amounts of data being
received on the customer successfully?
Specifically in Germany, this would not be that relevant as there are rules and
regulations that the information received is private and cannot be tempted with.
Many companies that I know still use the channels, whereby you have to use a tick
box to receive more information etc.
12. What roles, in your mind will social media marketing play in the future?
The internet and the social media wave is an important part of any business in the
future does not matter in which industry you are in. Social media will carry on and
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companies need to integrate their business more in that direction. The challenge is
for companies to stay relevant and utilize the different platforms available such as
social media and mobile in the future. It is also important to combine the physical
trade with the digital trade and network these because in some trades, you cannot
purchase online yet, however the trend will be that companies will but more budget
towards integration of traditional and digital.
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Questionnaire and Interview of the topic
Capturing the value of Social media marketing
Focusing on ROI
Answered by EXPERT B. ORM manager in South Africa Tuesday
14 May 2013 10:41 AM
1. What do you hope to accomplish through social media for your clients and how do
you plan to measure progress? - I wish to have social media integrated at all levels of
a client’s engagement with their audience, whether it is customer service, to logistics,
to the communications. Everyone should be part of the engagement process. There
are a number of steps in getting there, but once an organisation understands the
importance of social engagement, it’s just a matter of time until implementation
takes place at various levels within the organisation. Measure - this can be done
through adoption metrics, such as no of posts per user per day i.e. you want to see a
steady increase.
2. How have you gone about assessing which social media tracking tools might be of
value or appropriate for your clients/companies use? The easiest way is to develop a
social maturity model i.e. as cost of tools increase so does the Business Intelligence
derived. So its about understanding the clients social maturity, then mapping it to the
correct solution on the graph. i.e. if a customer is starting out in Social, chances are
they need a free/cheap tool. But as they mature, their requirements advance and so
they need a tool with greater capability.
3. What in your mind are the best measuring tools? Radian6
4. There are many measuring tools that are free and some you have to pay for, which
are the most respected in the industry and which ones are the ones you recommend
to your clients/customers? Hootsuite on the lower end. Radian6 on the upperend.
5. Are there any industry benchmarks against which to measure your social media
practices? - I think category specific benchmarks are better than general i.e.
Insurance clients typically have 75% complaints ratio (positive to negative
comments). Where as Banking is more like 50%.
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6. What tools would you recommend to help companies maximize their time spent on
social media? - Radian6 Engagement Console makes it efficient to engage at scale
(and save a bunch of time doing so as it introduces ways to automate processes).
7. How important is social media marketing seen in companies, is it an essential part of
the marketing mix? - Again, it depends on category, as some understand the
importance and adopt easier than other e.g. Banking/Travel are at the forefront
while retail/FMCG are lagging in terms of their adoption.
8. Your business focuses on online activities, are you being asked to prove the value of
social media for your clients? Yip, increasingly ROI and the 'value' of social comes into
question.
9. What is the best way to measure the ROI of social media marketing? - Its best to
relate social actions to your business outcomes in order to determine ROI. i.e. you
need to decide the metrics to use that are most important to your business, like
'customer health' can be measured via retention metrics, and reduction in costs (as
an indicator of ROI) can be measured by the efficiencies in engaging in social media
vs real world like answering calls.
10. Is ROI the right measure of success for social media? - no, it depends on the overall
objective or goal e.g. if customer health is the goal, then things like sentiment ratio's
are more indicative.
11. In the Harvard Business manager April 2013, ‘Werbung, die wirkt!’ discusses how
companies are often measuring different marketing activities in silos. For example:
The digital department tracks their online activities separately to that of the
traditional marketing department who tracks Radio, TV, magazines differently and
hence budgets and success is just dedicated to silos. Do you think it is necessary to
integrate media mixes and stop viewing these from a silo perspective? Are essentially
online tracking tools more to listen and engage, rather than ROI? - No ideally the
more integration the better. Social usually is a mirror of all business activities i.e.
people talk about ad campaigns on social and this needs to reflect back at campaign
planning for alterations.
12. How do you foresee the future of social media online tracking? Are new tools
available? What is the latest trend? - The trend is consolidation. The likes of SAP,
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Adobe, IBM, Google are all buying up toolsets and integrating them into their existing
offering to bolster their offerings.
13. What roles, in your mind will social media marketing play in the future? - Social is
going to be how we do business. Like the fax, like the telephone, like the email, its
just how we are going to do everyday business.
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Questionnaire and Interview of the topic
Capturing the value of Social media marketing
Focusing on ROI
Answered by EXPERT C. Marketing & Strategy managing Director
South Africa Tuesday, 17 June 2013 10:41 AM
1. What do you hope to accomplish through social media for your clients and how do
you plan to measure progress? As the company is very new to online marketing and
are going through a re-branding exercise, I’m working through the benefits of using
social media. This includes understanding which tools their target markets are using
and the benefits of using the various tools to communicate with them.
2. How have you gone about assessing which social media tracking tools might be of
value or appropriate for your clients/companies use? We are testing some of the
tools to understand the level of engagement their customers want to have with them
in an online environment and deciding what resources need to be made available for
this.
3. What in your mind are the best measuring tools? We’re using analytics to track visits
to the site from social media and the call centre to gauge how users hear about the
company. Otherwise it’s currently quite a manual process to check the number of
likes, shares, followers and posts.
4. There are many measuring tools that are free and some you have to pay for, which
are the most respected in the industry and which ones are the ones you recommend
to your clients/customers? We’re mainly using the free tools that the sites offer to
track usage. This is due to the fact that the company doesn’t have a budget available
for the more expensive tracking tools.
5. Are there any industry benchmarks against which to measure your social media
practices? We’re looking at Alexa.com to track other sites to benchmark our
activities. We’ll also be looking at hootsuit and tweetdeck going forwards.
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6. What tools would you recommend to help companies maximize their time spent on
social media? I’d really like to be more proactive and use a more advanced listening
tool, such as radian6 or brandseye.
7. How important is social media marketing seen in companies, is it an essential part of
the marketing mix? I personally believe its key to understanding how users are
engaging with the company. However when a company is new to social media,
tracking and measuring can appear quite onerous and requires an investment of time
and resources to getting it right.
8. Your business focuses on online activities, are you being asked to prove the value of
social media for your clients? In my previous company it was imperative to track and
prove the value of online. However in my current company they are less interested in
tracking the value and more focused on getting the tools setup.
9. What is the best way to measure the ROI of social media marketing? The best way to
measure is to understand the spend versus the returns which are measured based on
the objectives of the campaign, e.g. the increased of awareness of a new offering,
driving traffic to the site and conversions, increased followers or likes, etc…
10. Is ROI the right measure of success for social media? I think it’s the best way to
provide the statistical evidence to the business that social media is a key factor in the
success of a campaign and can be used to justify increased focus, increased budgets or
additional resources. But this all depends on the correct benchmarks or targets being
defined up front.
11. In the Harvard Business manager April 2013, ‘Werbung, die wirkt!’ discusses how
companies are often measuring different marketing activities in silos. For example: The
digital department tracks their online activities separately to that of the traditional
marketing department who tracks Radio, TV, magazines differently and hence budgets
and success is just dedicated to silos. Do you think it is necessary to integrate media
mixes and stop viewing these from a silo perspective? Are essentially online tracking
tools more to listen and engage, rather than ROI? I view social media as an integral part
of measuring the total success of a campaign and should be tracked hand in hand with
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other initiatives e.g. TV. Therefore as long as the ROI is set correctly for social media it is
a good measure.
12. How do you foresee the future of social media online tracking? Are new tools available?
What is the latest trend? I think social media tracking is going to become even more
important over time, especially as users move away from engaging with call centres and
retail stores and engage more with companies using social media. The tools available at
the moment require a lot of attention from the marketing manage. So I think there’s
going to be more of a need for in-house social media specialists to run and measure
social marketing campaigns or outsource this to their media agency.
13. What roles, in your mind will social media marketing play in the future?As social media
becomes more mainstream and users expect companies to communicate and engage with
them online, more time, effort, budget and resources will need to be invested into social
media marketing than ever before.
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Questionnaire and Interview of the topic
Capturing the value of Social media marketing
Focusing on ROI
Answered by EXPERT D. Business Director Online Marketing
South Africa Tuesday, 20 June 2013 10:41 AM
1. What do you hope to accomplish through social media for your clients and how do you
plan to measure progress? Increased revenue through finding new customers and up-selling
to existing customers.
2. How have you gone about assessing which social media tracking tools might be of value or
appropriate for your clients/companies use? Yes, initially used bit.ly and Hootsuite - but
then discovered Hubspot which allows me to manage social media and track social media
updates, blog posts, web pages ad the leads they produce. I can do this for each of my
clients.
3. What in your mind are the best measuring tools? Tools that allow you to track leads
converting to customers. Having lots of readers and massive reach is not much use. It is the
same as PPC advertising- You can have lots of clicks, but that is not the use if they don’t
convert to customers. I track with social media channels and chich content produces the
most qualified leads and focus efforts on these.
4. There are many measuring tools that are free and some you have to pay for, which are the
most respected in the industry and which ones are the ones you recommend to your
clients/customers?
If a customer does not want to pay for the tools needed for mpul to generate revenue for
them – it is the same as found accounting without the software, it can be done, but with lots
of spreadsheets and taking a lot of time. We use Hubspot, Marketo or Pardot. None of our
customers have been able to afford Eloqua. There are social media specific tools, but I don’t
find these useful – I need to generate revenue not reach.
5. Are there any industry benchmarks against which to measure your social media practices?
We use a 3% conversion ratio – we make sure that all readers are driven to a website and we
meant to get a 3% conversion.
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6. What tools would you recommend to help companies maximize their time spent on social
media? Tools that help block out noise – so we monitor conversations of only contacts that
are leads or customers – we do this as the marketing automation providers have an
integrated customer database.
7. How important is social media marketing seen in companies, is it an essential part of the
marketing mix? No. it is seen as something you must do but a waste of money. Too many
companies post content they have not created and content that pushes product instead of
educating and helping buyers. All content has to have relevant call to actions to drive sales.
8. Your business focuses on online activities, are you being asked to prove the value of social
media for your clients? Yes, we will not work with you if you just want social media. We do
not tie our customers into contracts, if we are not generating revenue after 6 months, then
we recommend that you cancel with us.
9. What is the best way to measure the ROI of social media marketing? Amount of revenue
generated.
10. Is ROI the right measure of success for social media? Yes. Who cares how many people
read or shared your article? For example, we had a tax client that had their budget speech
infograhics shared, but it was all university students who shared it, not their target market.
11. In the Harvard Business manager April 2013, ‘Werbung, die wirkt!’ discusses how
companies are often measuring different marketing activities in silos. For example: The
digital department tracks their online activities separately to that of the traditional
marketing department who tracks Radio, TV, magazines differently and hence budgets and
success is just dedicated to silos. Do you think it is necessary to integrate media mixes and
stop viewing these from a silo perspective? Are essentially online tracking tools more to
listen and engage, rather than ROI?
Yes it is necessary. Many marketing automation providers do this now. South Africa is very
slow to adopt this. Marketing manager are scared to do this as it will show that their
campaigns don’t work.
12. How do you foresee the future of social media online tracking? Are new tools available?
What is the latest trend? I think it is going to get noisier with more companies doing content
marketing. We going to need some further filtering tools.
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13. What roles, in your mind will social media marketing play in the future? It is going to be
very important. But brands have to earn their presence not to buy it.
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AFFIDAVIT
Anne Schmidt
I hereby declare that I have written this paper on my own and with no help than the
literature and other supportive material listed in the appendix. Citations of sentences and
parts of sentences are declared as such, while other imitations are clearly marked and linked
to original sources with regard to extent and intention of the statements made.
This thesis has never been handed in to any examination authority before and it is also not
yet published.
Wuppertal, 28th June 2013
Signature: _____________________