One of the most common challenges we address in the SMToolbox column is turning data into actionable insights. Evidence based insights are essential as improving your marketing is a continuous cycle of planning, action and review. It is a process of constant adjustment. All tools provide data, the best tools provide intelligence to help you make informed decisions. We take a look at how Spredfast Intelligence can provide insights to support smarter marketing decisions.
Overview
The team at Spredfast are developing a comprehensive social marketing suite for marketers in both brands and agencies. A few months ago we looked at Spark, which Spedfast developed to help marketers discover trending content in real time. This week Spredfast have launched their latest tool Spredfast Intelligence. This tool is focused on creating insights and intelligence from the Twitter firehose to help marketers make better and more informed decisions. It also allows you to review your performance and how your campaign has increased awareness and share of voice.
"More Satisfying Than Italian"
I thought we would start with a real life example of how the Intelligence tool can help you review your social marketing performance and provide evidence of your success.
One of the most talked about moments of the recent World Cup was when Luis Suarez appeared to bite an Italian defender. The Snickers team, who have been running a popular "You're not you when you're hungry" ad campaign, were quick to see the opportunity for some guerilla marketing. They instantly tweeted a picture of a Snickers bar with the tagline "More satisfying than an Italian".
The campaign was a great example of agile social marketing. The tweet got tens of thousands of retweets. However, how effective was the campaign?
Snickers could use Spedfast Intelligence to review the performance of the campaign and how effective it had been in increasing their share of voice. One of the key features of Intelligence is a share of voice assessment. You can specify terms, locations, languages and date ranges to establish the share of voice of different brands.
What Intelligence reveals was not simply that Snickers gained a larger share of voice than its immediate competitors but that it actually gained a larger share of voice in the immediate period than brands such as Nike or Adidas, which had invested very heavily in the World Cup. Whilst real time marketing carries risk this was clearly a very successful campaign.
Example Share of Voice Report
Three Key Use Cases For Spredfast Intelligence
Having had a play with the tool this week I can see three key use cases for marketers. These are:
1. Instant search - what is happening now
2. Strategy and planning
3. Performance review
I have effectively covered the third of these in the Suarez campaign above so let's look at the other two use cases.
Instant Search
The thing I really like about Spredfast Intelligence is that it uses a search box interface, it is what I like about other discovery tools such as Topsy and BuzzSumo. Many tools have complicated and powerful reports and feeds, but in terms of ease of use nothing beats a search box.
You just type in your topic or brand name and Intelligence will show you the volume of mentions over time, the people active and the top terms. You can also use filters such as language and location; or search for multiple terms to compare them.
Strategy and Planning
The insights that Intelligence provides can be used to inform your social media strategy and planning. In their case studies Spredfast have outlined how Playstation used Intelligence to help identify the top ten markets to physically launch a campaign. They tracked volumes of mentions by location to help identify potential cities for a promotional tour and the key influencers in those markets. They could also see the impact of different pilot trailers and promotional activities.
The Sony project also involved doing A/B testing of a paid media campaign and an organic campaign to compare results and analyze where paid and organic activity achieved the most impact.
Personally I think the time based graph is very useful in assessing patterns and how topics peak and decline on Twitter. I also like how you can easily drag the time periods to focus in on particular periods.
All of the data is exportable so that you can use it within other toolsets for further analysis.
Summary
The larger social media marketing tools are becoming comprehensive platforms to help marketers plan, discover, and engage with their audiences. Whether they started as monitoring tools, scheduling tools or social analytics tools there is a clear convergence taking place. Spredfast epitomizes this trend with the development of Spark and Intelligence alongside their tools to monitor and manage conversations and to create engaging experiences.
You can find out more about Intelligence at http://www.spredfast.com/social-media-marketing/spredfast-intelligence.