How Social Media Analytics Impacts Your Marketing Funnel

Existing on social media is not enough; organizations need to actively pursue concrete and challenging social media goals to be able to enjoy any visible improvements in key performance metrics. Marketing leaders across the globe acknowledge the criticality of social media analytics tools in the context of their complete marketing mix.

Understanding the Marketing Funnel

Marketing is responsible for planning and executing campaigns that aim at pushing prospects closer to the ultimate goal of businesses – sales. Though the marketing funnel of each business differs from the other, they all have a few phases/stages in common. The funnel, in essence, is a representation of the journey of the customer, from the status of someone barely exposed to the company’s products, brand, capabilities, to someone who is an active purchaser, and even a brand advocate.

It all begins with inquiries – both organic as well as ones driven via awareness campaigns. Next up, there’s the stage of marketing qualification, where the leads are qualified based on different criteria. Next up, the sales team executes the tasks of sales qualification. Eventually, it’s time for closure, and doing everything to drive repeat business.

The Social Media Analytics Approach – A Driver of Success

Did you know – in a survey, 79% of marketers admitted that it’s challenging to get the attention of target customers! Also, the average click-through rates on promoted Tweets and display ads across formats in the US is 0.35% and 0.08%!  

This is ample testimony to the fact that unmonitored and unoptimized social media spending, in fact, is nothing but wasted marketing budget. This is why the social media analytics approach proves invaluable for brands to keep on pumping success cases through their marketing funnel.

Social Media Listening – Helping Marketers Accurately Measure Social Media KPIs

Social listening is the method of using social media data to gain insights into the wants and expectations of target audiences, to enable brands to communicate with them accordingly, and attract, sustain, and retain their attention. Advanced social listening capabilities offered in the digital platforms offered by leading tech players also involve sentiment analysis and real-time analytics.

Narrow, for instance, helps brands build relevant Twitter followings by engaging new users who’re talking about topics relevant to your target audience. Audience research, keyword performance analytics, management of multiple accounts from a single dashboard – all this makes Narrow a must-have for brands with a Twitter profile.

Pumping Success Through Marketing Funnels By The Force of Social Analytics

Advanced social media analytics, it must be understood, extend well beyond basic KPIs such as likes, shares, tweets, retweets, followers, click through rates, conversion rates, and social media ROI. Some of the insights that help marketers optimize marketing funnels are:

• The kind of content, themes, and content formats that drive maximum exposure. For example, creating newsworthy content can help the content go viral in no time. Have a look at some exciting new ways shared by Frac.tl to prepare newsworthy content.
• Choosing the right time to post social media content aimed at specific groups
• The ideas, brands, and products that are easier to promote via social media
• The cost of customer acquisition on social media

These analytical measures are closely aligned with the marketing funnel, measuring complex phenomena across the different stages.

SAP – Pioneering The Social Analytics Power Boost for Global Brands

SAP has integrated social media analytics capabilities with many of its existing platforms and continues to add more firepower to the social toolkit. SAP, for instance, has integrated Twitter with its CRM suite, created SAP Jam – a new social media platform, and its StreamWork platform supports open programming standard OpenSocial. The way SAP has helped NFL and NBA to engage with their fans via social media, helping them quickly move from one stage of the marketing funnel to the subsequent stage, is a perfect example and showcasing of what waits ahead.

Concluding Remarks

Because social media touches each of the stages of a marketing funnel in more ways than one, it’s safe to acknowledge the importance of social media analytics for a brand to truly control, optimize, and improve its marketing funnel.