Listening to the voice of the customer
With the suge in the adoption of digital media and devices — there are now on average 4 digital devices per every human on earth, companies are investing billions in digital marketing.
Consumers themeselves, are increasingly turning to online channels — both branded and peer-to-peer — to seek advice and answers, as well as to share experiences and perceptions about brands across industries.
A robust digital strategy can help create a seamless customer experience that supports a company’s brand, regardless of touch point, channel, or device. It can also increase the transparency and agility of a company to make informed decisions for quick response to rapid market changes.
No strategy is complete however, without specific metrics and KPIs — values used by companies to measure and track the performance of their activities. Since digital marketing teams use a number of tools to promote their services and products, tracking the results can be time consuming and difficult or even not provide adequate insights. By creating specific digital KPIs and tracking them, it’s easy to determine targets and goals and measure performance based on those values.
Below are some key performance indicators that every company should be using to measure their brand performance.
KPI 1. Total active users across all social networks
Description: Aggregate view of the total reach for your company’s social activity.
Why measure: This KPI measures the overall reach of your company’s social activity and therefore the base of consumers it is possible to influence directly.
How to measure: Website analytics, social analytics
KPI 2. Social engagement
Description: Aggregate view of likes, comments, shares across social.
Why measure: To measure community engagement with social channels.
How to measure: Social analytics
KPI 3. Change in overall positive sentiment
Description: An index which shows the change in number of overall positive conversations online about your company/brand brand (posts, comments, articles, blogs, tweets, etc.).
Why measure: This KPI measures the overall increase in brand sentiment online, which provides a good measure of the impact of your marketing activity.
How to measure: Social listening tool
KPI 4. Brand advocacy in social
Description: Measure of how favourable consumers are towards your brand having interacted with your company’s social presence.
Why measure: Comments on how well social activity has performed at driving brand advocacy.
How to measure: Survey data taken with social community members (e.g. twitter fans) and with an uncontacted control base
KPI 5. Total number of click throughs from social to website
Description: Volume of customers and prospects driven to the website from social.
Why measure: This measures the effectiveness of your company’s social reach to convert by the number of referrals to owned digital channels.
How to measure: Referral data from website analytics