How Can You Assess the Impact of Your Social Media Marketing Campaigns?
To help you effectively assess the impact of your social media campaigns, we asked digital marketers and marketing managers this question for their best tips. From looking at key metrics and comments to using sentiment analysis for deeper insights, here are the top eight tips these experts shared on evaluating campaign success.
- Look at Key Metrics and Comments
- Focus on Engagement and Conversation
- Implement A/B Testing for Insights
- Have Authentic Conversations With Audience
- Track Conversions for Tangible Outcomes
- Analyze KPIs with Comprehensive Reports
- Evaluate Engagement and Sentiment
- Use Sentiment Analysis for Deeper Insights
Look at Key Metrics and Comments
When running social media campaigns, I first look toward the metrics such as clicks and click-through rate (CTR). Next, I look at conversions and engagement, such as the number of comments, shares, and likes. But one key element I spend time looking at is the comments. When I start to see comments that are indications of buying interest, that’s when I feel the campaign is getting the traction we’re after.
Leslie Gelina
Digital Marketer, Frizzlie
Focus on Engagement and Conversation
Focus on engagement rate and conversation surrounding the topic rather than just raw follower numbers, likes, or reach. Not to say that those things aren’t important, but engagement is key to assessing impact because it’s more than a “like,” which just requires a button press—it’s someone taking the time to think about the message you are trying to convey and connect it to their thoughts, views, and experiences. It has a quantitative and qualitative impact!
Engagement is what I like to call “enthusiastic participation,” which can be in the form of a comment, a share, conversation sentiment, clicking a call-to-action, or a direct message. Social media is a platform to educate, connect, and inspire—to tell a story since, as humans, storytelling resonates with all of us.
High engagement often correlates with better brand awareness, customer relationships, and that crucial “trust factor.” It can be a more meaningful indicator of campaign impact since it highlights other crucial success metrics: content relevance, audience interest, authentic connection, loyalty, and growth potential.
Regardless of your industry, your audience wants to feel seen, heard, and understood—engagement and conversation sentiments are great ways to assess that.
Ashley Heesch
Marketing Manager, Defy Mortgage
Implement A/B Testing for Insights
Implementing A/B testing across different variables of your social media campaign is an invaluable tip for assessing its impact. By systematically varying elements such as the call-to-action, image use, or post timing, you can gather data on what resonates most with your audience. At our company, we conduct A/B tests regularly to optimize engagement rates and click-throughs, thereby continuously improving the effectiveness of our campaigns. The results help us not only understand what attracts our audience but also refine our content to better meet their preferences and needs.
Jason Hennessey
CEO, Hennessey Digital
Have Authentic Conversations With Audience
One powerful approach to assessing your social media campaign’s impact is to have authentic conversations with your audience. Engaging directly through comments, messages, or live sessions lets you hear firsthand how your content is affecting them. This interaction transcends mere metrics; it builds a genuine rapport and trust with your followers. By listening to their stories, challenges, and joys, you gain invaluable insights into the soul of your campaign, understanding its true emotional reach and significance.
Rohit Vedantwar
Co-Founder & SEO Expert, Supramind.com
Track Conversions for Tangible Outcomes
My top tip for assessing campaign impact is to focus on conversion tracking rather than vanity metrics. It’s not about likes or shares, but about how your social media efforts are driving tangible business outcomes.
We implemented this approach when expanding our B2B SaaS offering globally. We set up UTM parameters for all our social media links and integrated them with our CRM system. This allowed us to track not just clicks, but how many of those clicks turned into demo requests, free trials, and ultimately, paying customers.
For instance, during a recent LinkedIn campaign promoting our subscription management platform, we saw high engagement rates. However, by tracking conversions, we realized that while the campaign was great for brand awareness, it wasn’t driving as many qualified leads as we’d hoped. This insight allowed us to quickly pivot our strategy, resulting in a 30% increase in demo requests from social media in the following quarter.
By focusing on real impact rather than surface-level metrics, we’ve been able to continually refine our social media strategy to drive meaningful business results.
Emelie Linheden
VP of Marketing, Younium AB
Analyze KPIs with Comprehensive Reports
My advice is to establish comprehensive monthly reports that analyze all your KPIs, like engagement, CTR, CPC, and conversion metrics. We have our CRM software connected to our social media platforms and website to track organic and paid interactions and gather insights into which leads turn out to be quality leads, and we can follow the prospect’s journey along the way.
Additionally, by using tools like Google Analytics and platform-specific insights, we can track the journey of users from social media to our website and measure the campaign’s direct impact on sales and engagement. This setup allows us to see not just the surface-level engagement, but also how these interactions translate into quality leads.
By focusing on both engagement metrics and lead quality, we gain a comprehensive view of our campaign’s effectiveness, enabling us to optimize future efforts for better impact and ROI.
David Breitenbach
Chief Marketing Officer, PatentRenewal.com
Evaluate Engagement and Sentiment
When assessing campaign impact, many go straight for conversions and ROI; this makes sense if the goal is strictly revenue. As a brand-centric marketing team, we aim first for engagement and sentiment because really great brands produce sustainable growth.
A good analysis includes identifying the tone of engagement from followers and customers and not just tallying up the numbers. This is the sentiment that your people are echoing in their communication with your brand.
To dive even deeper, we use a simple test to gauge how well our messaging is landing. Can we hear our mission, ethos, or values being matched by our community? If so, we know we’re on the right track.
Chrystal Paasch
Founder, Modern Chrystal
Use Sentiment Analysis for Deeper Insights
Most people are stuck analyzing vanity metrics such as likes and shares that they often overlook a crucial indicator of campaign impact: sentiment analysis. I’m not suggesting overlooking the importance of likes, shares, and comments. Still, one must realize that these metrics fail to capture the nuanced emotions and perceptions that truly drive brand loyalty and advocacy.
Sentiment analysis delves deeper, allowing us to gauge the emotional response to our campaigns. Are people excited, angry, confused, or indifferent? Understanding these emotions is important because they directly correlate to brand perception and purchase intent. By tracking sentiment over time, we can identify trends, measure the effectiveness of messages, and make data-driven adjustments to optimize campaigns.
For example, if you run a campaign aimed at promoting sustainability, it might generate high engagement but negative sentiment due to concerns about greenwashing. Sentiment analysis would uncover this issue, enabling us to address the underlying concerns and build trust with our audience. Moreover, sentiment analysis helps identify and amplify positive conversations.
Social media marketers can create more content that elicits similar positive responses by understanding what resonates with our audience. It’s about turning casual fans into passionate advocates.
Raviraj Hegde
Svp of Growth & Sales, Donorbox
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