Always keen to learn what other people in the industry are doing with measurement and metrics on their campaigns, 33 Digital went down to the latest Measurement Camp in London. Hosted by Will McInnes from Nixon McInnes, the event took place at The Good Agency and was attended by about 60 people.
The format of the event was to have two presentations from different campaigns that acted as case studies for how people are measuring their campaigns. Afterwards, the room was split into four groups, so that each group could take an example campaign and come up with some ideas on how to measure it effectively.
First up from the presentations was Tomas Gonsorcik from Interaction London, discussing how his agency measured a social media campaign for a large software firm.
There were 3 key measures that Tomas used in the campaign:
- Coverage
- Sentiment
- Driving traffic
The campaign generated an increase in coverage in the three areas that were tracked:
- Websites
- Blogs
- Forums
Positive sentiment increased across the board, with sentiment also broken down into several themes. These themes were analysed at the beginning and end of the campaign, the results being that the percentage of positive sentiment increased and negative sentiment decreased around each of the themes:
- Awareness
- Cost
- Ignorance
- No other choice
- Historical associations
- Improvement
- Functionality
- Competition
Driving traffic to the campaign microsite was also measured in 3 terms:
- Paid search
- Banner ads
- Social media
At the beginning of the campaign, paid search was the highest percentage method for driving traffic to the campaign microsite. Banner ads and social media both had a small percentage in comparison. But at the end of the campaign, social media became the method with the highest percentage of driving traffic.
The reason given on why paid search is still more effective than social media as a method for driving traffic to sites was that paid search is more advanced as an practice (over social media marketing). But social media and the tools and techniques associated with it are becoming more advanced and are able to more than compete.
As well as generally driving traffic, social media also drives more quality traffic to sites: if someone comes to a site from a social media presence, they are more likely to spend more time on that site than if they came through a search link or a banner ad.
One well placed blog post around a well run event with a well executed social media strategy to back it can have a big impact on the success of a campaign. In this particular campaign, social media was a better return on investment than paid search or banner ads, which led to some ‘interesting discussions’ between the SEO and PR agencies.
Key Learnings: The Bottom Line has to be part of any integrated campaign. Coverage, sentiment and traffic are all well and good, but the most important measure is how this converts to sales and drives revenue.
The second presentation was from Andy Keetch from Content & Motion and Jordan Stone from Text 100 who showcased their work on a campaign for IBM.
IBM had built an online 3D replica of China’s Forbidden City using their Service Orientated Architecture (SOA). The campaign site attracted 280,000 visitors since October 2008.
The aim of the campaign was to take the people that specialise in SOA to attend two seminars that took place in the Virtual Forbidden City, create significant lead generation, identify the influencers in the SOA industry, and ultimately raise awareness if IBM’s SOA services.
Measurement and metrics was a key part of the campaign from the outset. They had put in place a mixture of quantitative data that was used to give the client week-by-week updates and qualitative data that was used in conjunction to give an idea of sentiment towards the campaign.
They conducted a Platform Report at the beginning of the campaign to identify which communities their key influencers were part of. It emerged that Twitter was the most effective platform for both finding and engaging with key influencers.
Using a mixture of free online measurement tools, such as Technorati and backlinks, and unique urls to track incoming traffic, the campaign was successful in raising awareness and getting people sign up to the the 2 seminars. Unfortunately, the drop out rate at the actual seminars was high, but that was balanced to the high value of the leads generated.
Key Learnings:
- Agree on timescales at the beginning of the campaign and get approval from the client
- Have clear goals and objectives
- Make sure you have direct access to the site stats
- Also think about metrics in a qualitative context
Overall, Measurement Camp was as valuable as ever and if you’re interested in learning how to improve the measurement of your social media campaigns, you should look out for the next one here.
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