As we have seen from a number of blogs now, and as we all know from our past marketing studies, measuring the effectiveness of any campaign (be it SM or mass media advertising) is vital:
1. to see if we meet our objectives
2. to justify asking for money to further develop our strategies
3. to keep our brand alive and shareholders happy
Some ideas have come up such as the two KPI's per tow categories being Volume and engagement - Thanks B More Social!
So how does Coke do it?
One interesting blog is suggesting that Coke seem to have it wrong because their SM activities hardly seem worth the effort. I disagree with this. My take is that Coke's objectives for SM would be to keep SM consumers aware and engaged. I don't think Coke is only engaging with 9% of their target, I think they are possibly engaging with a much larger percentage of their online market. They have phenomenal amounts of money, so one would imagine they would be able to employ the tools to measure it.
A Mashable post has looked at some successful businesses and asked them how they do it. My take from this: know your objectives before you measure! If you want a huge Facebook following, measuring is easy, but in most cases, there will be more to what you want to measure.
How do any of you measure any of your SM activities at work. Any suggestions for Coke?
Ross
Great post Ross! I agree that coke is engaging with a much larger percentage of their online market, if only cemented by the new music social media platform they are launching, Coca Cola Music. I actually link back to your post here as that's what I cover in my latest post.
ReplyDeleteThey'd be measuring don't be worrying about that Ross! Coke use sm in the same way they use traditional tv advertising i.e. to saturate the market so that it is drilled into us 'open happiness', 'coke is life', do I really want to be the only one of my friends buying a 'cheaper' mixer (see my comment on Friday's latest blog. Whether it's knowing how many fb friends and how often they are clicking on You Tube clips etc they'd be watching and doing the adds. They no doubt have you on their radar too ;)
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with Coke trying to keep the sm consumers aware. Everyone knows Coke, so they're not trying to do something magical with their campaigns. It's more about just reminding the consumers that 'hey, we're still here'. Measuring the effectiveness is hard though, one way could be to offer some sort of incentives maybe for participating in a campaign, to see how many people actually engage with them through sm..
ReplyDeleteI agree w u, Ross. nothing s wrong if Coke use SM to maintain consumer awareness and engagement. I also think that they should create a SM activity to attract their online consumers to participate in. :D
ReplyDeleteI think that even though Coke is such a profitable company it should be interesting to see if this will translate to popularity online.
ReplyDeleteGetting consumers to participate and possibly getting them to somewhere physical as well as virtual could prove to be useful. At my work we measure success through those that actually translate to viable business opportunities for us - who emails, visits us, buys our products etc. And we usually receive feedback online which good or bad helps to build our online presence.
Thanks for your comments guys. @Sonika, that is an interesting way you measure, what are you objectives? Are your SM objectives to increase sales? I may have mentioned this before, but sometimes on a hot sunny day, all coke does is to post Open Happiness to their fans. Surely this is part of raising awareness, but I would definitely imagine that there is an element of sales drive here, hot day + coke = happiness. And then it would be easy to measure whether that little post may have had a spike in sales for an hour around the time of the post, where the hot day is being enjoyed by many.
ReplyDeleteRoss
Great blog Ross! As marketers we know that measuring the success of campaigns is incredibly difficult to do in many cases. I agree with Roni in that, everyone in the world knows the Coke brand- they don't need to explain themselves or what they are about anymore. Rather as Roni said, its about staying relevant and appearing in the space where they are likely to appeal to the most people- SM is obviously perfect for them as you said Ross. And the fact that their products are so easy to find and buy means that they just need to put out a gentle reminder, like the 'open happiness' idea, and I'm sure many of the people who see that post would find it hard to resist!
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