Maximizing Success in Social Media Marketing: How to Build an Effective KPI Framework (+ FREE Cheatsheet)

As of April 2024, there were 5.44 billion internet users worldwide. Of this total, 5.07 billion, or 93% of the internet population, were social media users (source: Statista). This vast user base presents an exciting opportunity for businesses to connect with 63% of the global population, showcasing the immense potential of social media.

Yet, many companies face the challenge of measuring the impact of social media marketing on their business goals.

Part of the reason is that many marketers measure success through social media metrics—such as "likes" and "followers"—that are difficult to connect to the funnel.

Most businesses are primarily concerned with metrics such as brand awareness, qualified leads, and conversions.

The good news is that social platforms offer a wealth of measurements to help the most diligent analyst correctly track the impact on business KPIs.

The KPI framework

Building a robust KPI framework is critical for all social media marketers who want to ensure the management team understands their reports.

The first step is to create clear mission statements for every platform your business activates.

The previous article of this series described mission statements in more detail and their importance during the social media audit. If you haven't read it, check it out.

Once you have your mission statement, it becomes easy to identify which stage of the funnel a specific channel or activity will impact.

Let's make an example:

Your mission statement for TikTok could be "increasing the brand reach among Gen-zers". In this context, your activity on TikTok is an attempt to increase brand awareness.

When you are clear on the connection between the mission statement and the funnel stage, you can move one level deeper and identify what social media metrics can function as KPIs.

To use the example above, if your goal is to increase brand awareness among Gen-zers, reach and frequency towards that audience would be an appropriate KPI to measure against.

To facilitate your work, we have compiled a cheat sheet showing how the most popular social media metrics relate to the different funnel stages.

Disclaimer: To track bottom-funnel results (such as conversions), you need a good tracking setup (including UTM, tag manager / Google Analytics, etc.). If you are unsure about your tracking setup, you can get in touch for a personalised consultation.

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In-platform studies

Many popular platforms offer advanced campaign analysis options, often with third-party marketing research agencies.

These in-platform studies are often performed to measure the business impact of "bigger" social media paid campaigns.

The most famous studies are:

• Brand Lift Study (BLS): Brand Lift measures the performance of your campaign with a focus on metrics such as ad recall, brand awareness, purchase intent, etc, helping you align your campaign results with your organisation's marketing goals. BLSs use the exposed / non-exposed testing methodology across large samples, dividing the samples into: The difference in responses between these two groups will determine the influence of your ads on the key brand metrics you selected. In addition to your target metric's % increase (or decrease), you can see the total lifted users and the cost per lifted user. This level of detail can help you assess your campaign's ROI.

• People who have been exposed to your campaign

• Eligible people who haven't been exposed to your campaign

• Incrementality: Incremental sales (or conversion lift) studies are designed to help understand the contribution of a specific social media platform (or campaign) to the bottom line. Most analytics systems still rely on last-click attribution models, but the over-reliance on clicks does not account for the value an ad impression creates. By measuring the impact of being exposed to an ad across different devices, incremental sales studies offer a more comprehensive view of the channel contribution to sales, regardless of whether the conversion happens online, offline or in-app. Similarly to BLS, conversion lift studies randomly divide your audience into two groups (test and control). The platform then compares test and control group conversions to calculate lift.

Key learnings and takeaway

The steady growth of social media presents an unparalleled opportunity for businesses to reach a global audience. However, many companies still struggle to measure the impact of their social media marketing efforts on business goals, often due to a reliance on vanity metrics that do not directly correlate with business outcomes.

Developing a robust KPI framework is crucial for social media marketers who want to track their performance effectively. Start by establishing clear mission statements for each social media platform and connecting them to specific marketing funnel stages. For instance, if you aim to increase brand reach within a specific audience, you focus on brand awareness.

With a clear mission statement and identified funnel stage, you can then select the most appropriate social metrics as proxies to assess your strategy's performance. Advanced analytical tools, such as brand and conversion lift studies, offer deeper insights into your campaign's impact and ROI, enabling data-driven decisions.

A robust tracking setup is essential for accurately measuring bottom-funnel results. Implement tools like UTM parameters, tag managers, and Google Analytics to capture all relevant data, and regularly review and optimise your tracking setup to ensure it is comprehensive and effective.

Educating your team on the importance of a KPI framework and the available tools for measuring success is vital. This knowledge empowers them to produce reports that communicate the impact of social media activities to the management team, demonstrating the actual value of your marketing efforts.

If you're looking to navigate the complexities of social media measurement and optimise your marketing efforts, our team at Enneffe is here to help. Contact us today to discuss how we can work together to tackle your social media measurement challenges and drive meaningful results for your business.

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A look to the cookieless era

As we move towards a cookieless future, marketers will face significant challenges in measuring and tracking user behaviour online. Third-party cookies, which have long been the backbone of digital advertising and user analytics, are becoming obsolete due to increasing privacy concerns and regulatory changes. This shift necessitates a fundamental change in how marketers gather data, track conversions, and understand their audience's journey.

One of the primary challenges will be the loss of detailed tracking and targeting capabilities that third-party cookies provide. Marketers must find alternative methods to gather actionable insights without relying on these cookies. That might involve leveraging first-party data more effectively, utilising consent-driven data collection practices, and adopting new technologies such as browser APIs and server-side tracking.

To start preparing for this transition, marketers should focus on building a robust first-party data strategy, including enhancing their customer relationship management (CRM) systems, encouraging direct user engagement to gather consented data, and investing in data management platforms (DMPs) that can integrate first-party data across various touchpoints. Additionally, staying informed about emerging privacy regulations and technological advancements will be crucial to adapt and thrive in a cookieless world. By proactively adjusting their strategies and exploring innovative data collection methods, marketers can ensure they can effectively deliver personalised experiences and measure success in this new landscape.