The debate on how best brands should measure the impact of digital marketing is not new. Here is an interesting perspective from Jack Mugi, the Founder of iStats on whether digital marketers are measuring the right metrics to justify the ROI of their marketing campaigns or media reach. Enjoy.
1. The issue of measuring the ROI of any online marketing campaign is every digital marketer’s nightmare yet very important for brands. Why do you think this is so?
Lack of training is the main reason closely followed by poor objective formulation. Most people doing digital in Kenya as in most places in the world are trained on the job. Only now are we seeing actual training courses solely dedicated to digital marketing so this is now being addressed.
ROI comes from formulating very easy to measure success metrics that are tied directly to the objective of the campaign. Basically, these are like objectives but in pure numbers. They are very easy to calculate the cost per acquisition or other metric once you have these numbers and compare them with other forms of marketing. That way you can measure the ROI by presenting numbers that point directly to the bottom line.
2. Which metrics should brands be tracking when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of campaigns and media reach?
Actual views (not potential views), actual reach (again, not potential reach), unique users talking about the brand, number of posts mentioning the brand, sentiment/tone of voice on average for all mentions, the average following of the users talking about the brand and conversation drivers. The last one is a good measure to see whether users initiate conversations with each other away from the brand or with the brand. This can be a good indicator or awareness levels and penetration.
3. Which metrics should brands not be measuring and why?
Any potential metrics especially for twitter. These are mostly flawed because they are actually not what they are presented as. Potential reach, for example, is calculated by adding up all followers of the users who have mentioned a brand. This is flawed for two reasons. One – not all people following these users are active twitter users and two – people share followers. A person X with 60k followers, for example, may have all followers following person Y who has 5k followers and so on. Same applies to impressions since they are also calculated from the reach.
Facebook metrics nowadays are mostly solid. Focus on people reached since Facebook do not ever let a brand reach all its audience without a budget.
4. Which metrics are you measuring on your newly launched online media monitoring tool iStats?
Unique users, posts, the average number of followers per user mentioning a brand, sentiment and conversation drivers. I also keep tabs on all links mentioning brands and score them for site page views, the reputation of the site and so on.
5. Do you have plans to start monitoring brand mentions on Facebook and Instagram?
Facebook and Instagram monitoring is not open data, but we are opening it up for brands that are willing to grant permission for our analysis. This data will however not be open to the public.
6. Is the value of influencer marketing diminishing in Kenya’s social media space, especially after the Bidco blackmail saga which was allegedly orchestrated by Nyakundi and Xtiandela who enjoy a huge Twitter following in Kenya?
What has diminished is trust because influence on social media will always be user driven. What will happen is a change in approach and probably also, methods used in calculating the fee for influencers. Brands will be much more cautious about who they work with – which is why we have started collecting data on influencers and categorizing their areas of influence, their sentiment/tone in their content and their perceived reach.
