Measuring communication performance is always a difficult task to new marketers, especially without the support from professional communication and research companies such as TNS, T&A Ogilvy, Bizlink Media. However, after each campaign, a report is a need, whether it’s positive or negative, because that is an important base for marketers to propose later programs. And perhaps most people have known ROI (Return on Investment) is of great significance in the analysis of business and finance as it is calculated directly on the revenue – cost. But in general, the benefits brought about by media have a very large latency and long-term significance, are hardly measured by revenue immediately. However, your boss firstly would care about or he couldn’t calculate how efficient the business is in comparison with the big paid investment. (This is a true story when I worked for a famous state company specializing on fast-moving consumer goods).
Being a marketer, you would find this is a dilemma and from the writer’s point of view, the key should be ROE (return on engagement) – it is a rather new concept in the booming time of social networks. Once all interactions concerning brands become more important, your work is to point out how these interactions promote your building-brand process.
Fans means loyal customers
Pareto’s theory says that: 80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients (one of the writer’s university lecturers says that now this ratio is 90/10), so that loyal customers are is “Muse” of any company. And it would be great, if you can prove that a fan page helps the company in attracting more loyal customers. It is the role of social networks that connects a brand with customers, which is greatly different from other types of advertising aiming at brand identity.
Downloads
If your products are applications or games, ROE certainly is the number of downloaders, which deserves to be expected from social media. It’s clear that other indicators can be seen in the back-end system of developers. However to marketing, download index from social network is the best figure to show how qualified your products are and which plan should be made.
Shares
Shares is one of the most important indicators to encourage ROE. Once a customer shares your content (even by words of mouth or social networks), it is a sign that you have had a brand advocator and a few new customers. Obviously, to share is a desired action which is much more difficult than to like or comment on your content. The content that is valuable – fit – trendy will have more opportunities to be shared by customers.
Engagement time
The longer your content interacts with customers, the more impression your brand makes on them. A brand with thorough content will extent engagement time with brand messages. And obviously, that is an indicator to show your campaign is to increase the brand value.
Feedback
People often like to complain and tend to share what they are dissatisfied with the others – typically the classic case “United breaks guitars”. Therefore, a good comment or a positive share from fans is very precious. This indicator shows how you are building the image and brand personality.