Evaluate Your Integrated Program.
We have been talking quite a bit about integrated thinking, strategies and design. But how do you know you are doing it right, or where you can evaluate possible spots for tweaks? Let’s use the same example I provided in my previous blog where a potential client is struggling with content for a social media platform. We would first start by focusing on their core objective: driving customers to their website. After posting content for about a month, here is where you can look to for answers to success.
1. Starting Point
Head right to Google Analytics and start digging into some of the core data. You want to see where the traffic is coming from for these efforts, what kind of numbers are you seeing for social in the Acquisition section. You are looking for a low bounce rate, time on site around 3 minutes to indicate your content is getting consumed, and a low exit rate cause the goal is to convert those readers into customers. You are also going to see which platform is performing the best to help shape your efforts and know where your engaged audience is coming from.
2. Behaviour Flow
You should also get to love behaviour flow in Analytics for tasks like this. For this example, track the click flow of those who came in through social and see what they are looking at and where they drop off. Observe the click path your visitors are taking to help drive future content focus, missed conversions, converted visitors as well as determining which social audience performs the best (It will also give you insights into your sites limitations, but that is another blog).
3. Be Critical
If you see that your integrated strategy is not performing well because of a low click-through rate, evaluate the content you are creating and how you are posting it. Are you writing a solid teaser to drive clicks? Are you embedding your posts on Facebook to help with clicks? Social is the gateway to your site so make sure you critique all your posts and tweets and continually iterate and optimize.
4. Engagement Insights
Move over to your social accounts and see what engagement numbers you are seeing. Look for Likes, shares, comments, mentions, etc. We use Social Report for this purpose and it has been very helpful with insights. You can use this information to see which articles garner the most interest and what you could expand on for future blog posts on your site. It is important to remember that content, especially Facebook posts, should be written specifically for engagement or for click-throughs. Getting both can be tricky so posting something twice for each outcome is important.
5. Complement and Expand Your Efforts
To build a proper integrated campaign, you should be looking at ways to have certain tactics compliment others. In this post we have kept this basic... just looking at how social content is driving clicks. But, now it is time to use the data from above, your additional insights into customer conversions through other digital channels like email and integrate all these efforts to the highest converting tactic. For example, if your newsletter converts a sale 15% of the time but your site only converts at 7% then you should use your social media platforms to drive newsletter sign-ups and well as clicks.
There is no magic bullet here, it will take a lot of data investigation, testing hunches, taking risks and constantly refining your tactics/content/focus etc. Refine, all the time…
Evaluating your integrated campaigns, with tools and your expertise is a constant process, but one that will focus you towards improved conversions and improved numbers.
Author: Shane Davis
Marketing