Unlike traditional marketing where you can simply give out flyers on the street and wait for potential customers to start making them calls and visits to measure your efforts, it takes more to measure social media. It might even be true to say it’s a tricky thing to do however, it definitely isn’t impossible.

So, how do you measure the returns of your social media efforts?

Some measure their efforts by the number of friends or contacts they amass – the better to get a word out on a promo, etc. Some go deeper by counting the number of actual interactions with these social media connections. Even deeper, others count the number of actual sales from these connections.

But, the old school business managers can take heart that there are more conventional tools and means available.  Below is one of the best resources and explanations I’ve seen on the topic and its quite entertaining too. Its by Olivier Blanchard of “The Brand Builder”

Enform has released the results of the Australian performance products usomer survey to help automotive performance brands better understand their customer and the rapidly changing market.  Enform targeted over 15,000 performance enthusiasts and industry participants and invited them to complete an online survey. 

 The survey covered the following issues:

• sources of performance product information and research used
• purchasing intentions including most likely buying channels
• online sources used for researching or buying performance products
• performance brands used in Australia, awareness and related Net Promoter Scores (NPS)*

Jim Gurieff, director of Enform says, ”We believe the results of the survey have uncovered a great opportunity for any Australian automotive performance brand that is looking for export opportunities and more effective and efficient ways to market their products in the performance sector.”

 A highlight summary of the questions and answers can be downloaded here.

Enform Networks is not aligned with Satmetrix or Bain & Co though we value and use the NPS* system to help clients build better and stronger brands that can grow at a faster rate. Global research (including Australia) has shown that brands with the highest NPS in their sector consistently out perform their competitors in growth and financial performance.

 In a nut shell, NPS is a simple but remarkably effective new method for measuring customer loyalty. A higher NPS delivers more powerful and more vocal customer advocacy resulting in cascading brand referral independent of conventional marketing and promotional spend.

NPS provides a simple comparable measure of customer satisfaction and future business growth by looking at customer loyalty perception which is often different to performance perception. That is, a brand or company could be considered as a “can do better” in its delivery performance while still retaining an excellent NPS indicating a strong referral and recommendation base.

For this reason Enform places high value in NPS when planning and deploying usomer promotion and support campaigns to create and leverage the “Buzz”.

The web and social media turbochargers the speed and reach of any message.  It will therefore leverage and multiply the result toward the positive or negative.

Click the link to download a copy of our NPS Explained document enform_nps_outline1

The usomer

Enform created the term “usomer” to describe the user or customer that actually makes the buying decision. So why not just call them the customer or user?

Because in many industries and markets the ultimate buying decision is split between several possible levels in the distribution chain or vertical channel. Equally, the same product may appeal to different market segments for different reasons.   

As a result, the ultimate end user or product consumer can be 2 to 3 times removed from the manufacturer. The automotive parts industry is a good example with many brands distributing their product through a WD or wholesale distributor first that then on-sells to a reseller or parts store that may then on-sell to a workshop or fitter who finally sells the product to the consumer.

Regardless of the length or complexity of the distribution chain, Enform defines the usomer as the person that ultimately makes the buying decision to purchase your brand and that can be the reseller shop that decides to stock your brand as the only solution for that product type, or the fitting shop that has a choice of brands but chooses yours for his customers or the traditional end consumer that asks for or chooses your brand by name, not just by function.       

Working to improve brand awareness, high NPS* or strong consumer advocacy is the key to profitable brand and company growth and the usomer is the logical target.   And the first step is to recognise who the usomer(s) is for your brand and sector and work accordingly to make sure they are happy to support and recommend your product. 

*Net Promoter Score index – for more on this important consumer advocacy metric visit www.netpromoter.org

Some interesting recent stats on Facebook Everything You Never Knew About Facebook, also summarised below. 

Meanwhile sub 18 year olds are leaving or avoiding Facebook and fragmenting into other sites that are yet to register on business radar. Arguments are starting over kids rejecting parents as “Friends” and the whole thing is starting to migrate toward a more mature mainstream media channel albeit with 2 way connection and classic social media charcteristics (so all you social media cynics shouldnt get too cosy) .

That’s both good and bad news as MySpace revenue has shrunk again and concern is that the core 18-25 and emerging pre-teen demographic is not staying on these channels and will go somewhere else. However, the upside is that a core demographic for many “traditional” brands and those with disposable income are joining up and is the largest growth sector.

Facebook has more than 250 million users, 120 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day

People 35 years old and older represent the fastest growing demographic.

1 billion social objects (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each week

About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States

30 million users currently access Facebook through their mobile devices

 Taken from http://www.conversationalcurrency.com/732/everything-you-never-knew-about-facebook/

That’s the heading of a recent article in The Australian newspaper, link 
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,25851720-15306,00.html

Apart from the endorsement and implied credibility for what is obviously becoming one of the most important broadcast social media channels of the day, there are a number of really interesting points here… but wait. Didn’t I just say “broadcast” social media? Isn’t that a contradiction and a pseudo blasphemous statement to use about any web related media tool? Possibly, but not for me and not for this discussion… 

What I find interesting in this article is stuff like this;

 “The 20-page document, produced by Neil Williams, BIS’s head of corporate digital channels, says that departments can use Twitter to communicate better with the public and it recommends that tweets should be “human and credible”.  

 The human and credible aspect is critical in effective communication in the social media space and our clients will recognise this from our briefing and training documents. In simple terms, don’t post something in writing that you wouldn’t say to to someone verbally. Avoid ‘corporate” speak (or bureaucratic speak I guess they’re saying) and just talk to people.    

The other interesting quote is;

“Though the account will be anonymous, it is helpful to define a hypothetical ‘voice’ so that tweets from multiple sources are presented in a consistent tone,” the guide says. “The tone of our Twitter channel must therefore be in informal spoken English and written for the channel.”

Apart from supporting the first point, it also mentions the “hypothetical voice” which should also resonate with our clients. The key is that the voice needs to be representative of the company, brand or organisation and effectively becomes the voice of the brand etc. That is both good and bad news as many learn at some cost to sales or brand value. I think the web and PR industry also refer to this as the “tone” of the text or message and that consistency of tone is critical in a good web site however getting the right tone in the first place is even more important.

And before the more left-leaning amongst us start reaching for their conspiracy guides and keyboards, the upside of a company “tone” strategy in our view, is ultimately better service and accessibility for the customer…. dare we say, more human?