There is always a leap of faith associated with anything which has to do with the web. Marketers who are on top of their craft know which theories to apply and which marketing models to put in place but everything begins from a hunch. It is only after hard data comes in that a campaign is tweaked to more closely reflect the behaviour of its target audience.
At that point one of two things happen: Either the campaign needs to be adjusted and run longer until the required results come in, or the campaign is abandoned for lack of budget and it is deemed to be unsuccessful.
Marketing of course should not operate that way. It does because between the planning and brainstorming which takes place at the start of every marketing campaign and the collation of figures which happens at its end there is a long period where those in charge twiddle their thumbs and bit their nails. Traditional marketing has built-in latency and the more social the campaign is the greater is the degree of latency that's built into it.
Immediate marketing campaigns have a direct reward-that-leads-to-action logic and a linear presentation. A typical example is the fresh fish section of your local supermarket at the end of the day. Chalk boards with offers go up pushing fish for obvious reasons. The offers get better as the day gets longer and the logic behind them is 'you see-you buy'. In that environment there is practically zero latency as the supermarket directly targets shoppers already shopping at its premises.
Unfortunately the web works in a different way. Social media marketing takes a long, circuitous route where brands need to establish a contact with their potential customers, engage in conversation, create a collaborative approach and then, slowly, lead to sales. This format has a broad funnel with a campaign going on at its broadest end and a sale made at the narrow part of it, sometime later.
The longer the funnel was the more expensive the marketing campaign tended to be and because adjustments and tweaks are almost always necessary success or failure, almost always, came down to money. Those with deep pockets could afford to tweak until they got it right and reaped the rewards. Those who didn't have the budget had to quit early, deciding there was no sense "to throw good money after bad".
Google is changing all this. The latest changes made to its Analytics introduce four new sections which draw data directly from Google's social layer. The first one 'Overview Report'. Provided you have set up Goals in your Google Analytics the Overview Report in the Multi-Channel Funnel section will enable you to see the number of conversions which come in from your social marketing, the path each one takes and the value of your social marketing in dollars.
The importance of this is staggering. No business that has a marketing campaign going ceases to trade through its other channels. Collectively, these generate a lot of noise at the conversion point where sales are made and it usually requires a significant amount of ingenuity and effort to separate them and find the signal that relates to the marketing campaign, so it can be assessed. Well, through this addition in Google Analytics you can have it on a daily basis at the click of a button.
You also have the ability to drill down, view the length of the conversion path your visitors take, see who is converted directly (coming from a social media source) and who is labelled ;assisted sale' by leaving and coming back another time to make a purchase.
Similarly, the 'Social Sources Report' allows you to find out the traffic coming from social sources and how many from each and, through the 'Social Plugin' report you actually get to see how visitors interact with your content through your social media buttons.
All of this refers to activity which takes place as visitors come to your site from outside. Google has expanded its reach through deals with social partners, like Disqus, Badoo and Meetup, to now help you find out what's happening about your brand, outside your website. It does this through the 'Activity Stream' which tracks activity related to your website's content across social networks.
It is still early days on Google's social layer. As the company makes new deals and accumulates more data it will refine its reporting capabilities. With the shortening of the funnel between a social marketing campaign's start and the moment it can be properly tracked I guess the days of wait and pray in marketing are coming to an end.
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