5 KPIs: How to Measure Social Media Marketing Performance

Social media marketing has become one of the most significant marketing channels for businesses. With more than 3.6 billion social media users worldwide, the platform has become an increasingly important tool for brands to reach out to their target audience. But how can you measure the success of your social media marketing campaigns? How do you measure social media marketing performance?

When was the last time you stepped onto a scale?

Was it covered with dust from being unused for so long?  I am going to guess you stepped on it reluctantly and somewhat afraid – like me, but you also knew that if you’re going to make any health changes in your life, it’s a necessary measurement.  Same principle applies to measuring your social media marketing.  In this article I share 5 KPIs (key performance indicators) we teach at our hands-on, social media workshops, on how to measure social media marketing performance.

How to Measure Social Media Marketing Performance

1) Conversions, Leads, and the Importance of Lifetime Value

Leads are a conversion metric that can be measured by the number of people who fill out an online form.  This happens on a landing page on your website or natively on a Facebook Lead Form, Messenger or WhatsApp.

Other social media marketing performance measurements include a sign-up for a newsletter, or any form of lead magnet (e-book, download, app) or price estimates. These are intent conversions and are designed to bring people into your ecosystem and move them to the bottom of the funnel.

Before you set out to measure conversions, we advise that you find out the Lifetime Value of a customer or a client. In marketing, customer lifetime value, lifetime customer value, or life-time value is a prognostication of the net profit contributed to the whole future relationship with a customer.

These conversions have the highest Costs Per Result.  For example: If you’re selling tickets for a conference for $1,800 per ticket, you can afford a qualified lead for $10-$20 per conversion.

A common scenario happens when you’re getting a high number of link clicks at a low-cost, BUT the visitors aren’t converting into Leads.  Then you know that your landing page or website page needs sales optimization.

Here are the call-to-action (CTA) buttons available for a Lead Campaign:

1. 1. No Button
   2. Apply Now
   3. Book Now
   4. Contact Us
   5. Download
   6. Get Quote
   7. Get Showtimes
   8. Listen Now
   9. Request Time
   10. See Menu
   11. Shop Now
   12. Sign Up
   13. Subscribe
   14. Watch More
   15. Call Now
   16. Get Directions
   17. Send Message
   18. Save
   19. Send WhatsApp Message
   20. Learn More

Real Example:

After running a few Messenger Ad Campaigns for a client, we started 19 Messaging Conversations at $26.32 per Result.  In this example we used Life Time Value (LTV) of the Lead, which you can calculate for your customers as follows (Credit-HubSpot):

1. 1. Calculate average purchase value: Calculate this number by dividing your company’s total revenue in a time period (usually one year) by the number of purchases over the course of that same time period.
   2. Calculate average purchase frequency rate: Calculate this number by dividing the number of purchases over the course of the time period by the number of unique customers who made purchases during that time period.
   3. Calculate customer value: Calculate this number by multiplying the average purchase value by the average purchase frequency rate.
   4. Calculate average customer lifespan: Calculate this number by averaging out the number of years a customer continues purchasing from your company.
   5. Then, calculate LTV by multiplying customer value by the average customer lifespan. This will give you an estimate of how much revenue you can reasonably expect an average customer to generate for your company over the course of their relationship with you.

2) Branding Metrics: Awareness

The Brand Awareness objective’s metric is called Estimated Ad Recall Lift (ARL) and it’s used to estimate the number of people likely to remember your ads within two days.  This is similarly used on TV where brands measure total purchase data and website visits after ads run.

In the 50s and 60s it took 3 touch points for someone to recall your brand but today it takes 7 times, making this campaign metric important if you’re looking to get your brand in front of many people. This still remains a good measurement of social media marketing performance and speaks to brand recognition. Additionally, marketers measure how much is the Cost per Estimated Ad Recall Lift (CARL) to find the most effective ad creative and audience combinations.

Real Example:

We ran Brand Awareness Campaigns for a client with total impressions at 103,117 that yielded 11,800 people likely to remember their ads within two days at a Cost per result of $0.03.  The next step to this strategy was to run concurrent traffic campaigns and continue to increase that 11,800 number while we had the audience’s attention.

3) Engagement Metrics: Likes, Comments, Shares, Messages

Measuring engagement tells you what content your audience prefers and how do they like to consume it, this facilitates AB testing, for example, from a particular audience of 2 video ads.

When you are moving a user down the sales funnel, from Awareness to Consideration, you run Engagement campaigns to achieve your Consideration objectives.  I like to break down engagement into 3 categories based on time:

1. 1. Post Likes, Loves, HaHa, Wow, Sad, or Angry Emojis require the least amount of time by users.
   2. Looking at Shares tells us which pieces of content your audience found especially spread-worthy.
   3. A Comment on the other hand requires a little more time commitment because this will reveal an opinion publicly, and it makes users more vulnerable.
   4. Direct Messages really require the most time. The user is now formulating a series of sentences and starting a private conversation which is a very strong social media marketing performance measurement.

Real Example:

A series of Engagement Campaigns for a client received 34,428 impressions and 21,062 Post Engagements resulting in an Average Engagement Rate of 61.18%.  More than 1 in 2 people engaged with the ads.  The next step to this strategy was to re-target these users who engaged 21,062 times with another set of ads to move them further down the funnel.

4) Traffic Metrics

Getting Traffic to your website is an important measure of social media marketing performance because it is the catalyst for more organic traffic.  It is measured in 2 ways: by Link Clicks or -my preference- by Landing Page Views to your website.  The latter only measures when a page has completely launched.  So, if you measure only Clicks, you are not getting the full picture.

Here are the current call-to-action (CTA) buttons available for a Traffic Campaign:

1. 1. No Button
   2. Apply Now
   3. Book Now
   4. Contact Us
   5. Donate Now
   6. Download
   7. Get Offer
   8. Get Quote
   9. Get Showtimes
   10. Listen Now
   11. Request Time
   12. See Menu
   13. Shop Now
   14. Sign Up
   15. Subscribe
   16. Watch More
   17. Learn More

Real Example:

One of our clients ran multiple Facebook Traffic Campaigns worth $4,721.40.  They yielded 426,456 people and resulted in 9,900 Landing Page Views.  The next step to this strategy was to re-target these users who visited the website to move them further down the funnel.

5) Sales and ROI

Measuring Sales online is not that difficult on social media if you are selling a product, service, or an event.  The path of an online purchase is made of a sequential series of landing pages.  To track Sales, you track the last page after someone pays for the product, typically a “Thank You” page.  So, you can connect the ad they came from, and the product sale it generated.

Unfortunately, this journey is not always linear.  If you’ve ever been shopping online, you know that you could be interrupted in the middle of the process for many reasons.

This is the ultimate measurement of your success in social media marketing.  This is how you measure your Return on Ads Spent (ROAS).

Real Example:

We prepared and ran website retargeting campaigns with a CTA button that said “Sign Up” for people to register for a conference – a $1,500 ticket value.  These campaigns included 6 ad sets with pixels measuring “Add to Cart” and “Thank You” page, and 27 ad variations.  The final result was 1 $1,500 website purchase at $171.37 Cost Per Result.

About the Author

Daveeed Wagner is a Fractional CMO at 1marketingidea, the trusted advisor and counselor to many influential thought leaders and businesses. Subscribe to the Marketing Memo to receive fresh marketing ideas weekly.