In our third Social Business Blueprint, Measuring Success in the Connected World, we’ve provided a toolkit for marketers who want to measure the brand and sales outcomes of their social marketing.

 

To provide a foundation for this paper, we commissioned Forrester Consulting in December 2011 to conduct an online survey of 101 VP- and C-level marketing professionals and interviewed 12 CEOs, CMOs, and VPs of marketing. The study showed that while marketers think attribution of social media marketing to branding and business results is crucial, most don’t understand how to measure their efforts. 

 

The survey showed that while 73% of marketers think that it is important to connect social media efforts with brand health metrics like awareness and perception, only 44% are actually tracking those metrics. Similarly, 59% of marketing leaders think it is important to connect social media efforts to business results, like revenue, but only 39% are doing the analysis. And finally, 72% of marketing leaders think it is important to compare social media to other offline and online efforts, but less than half (47%) are actually doing so.

 

However, many of the tools to measure the impact of social marketing to brand and sales goals exist today and marketers have the opportunity to better take advantage of these measurement platforms. Measuring Success in a Social World aims to tackle this gap in measurement knowledge by providing a proven framework for measuring success.

 

Measurement of social and digital marketing must relate back to the business metrics that matter:

The blueprint also provides a list of measurement firms that can help brands measure these three important pillars across platforms to drive efficiency for their business.

 

Read Measuring Success in the Connected World to learn more about how to tie social marketing activities to business outcomes. For more on the steps to building a connected brand and aligning your organization for social, check out our previous Social Business Blueprints here.