2020 has been tough for many, but social media marketing seems to have escaped the worst of the Covid fallout. In fact, in many organisations, social marketing has gained funding – or maintained its pre-pandemic budget – while other spending has been cut dramatically.
Data from June this year shows that social media budgets have increased by a whopping 74% since February, with 84% of marketers using social media for brand building.
Why? Paradoxically, the focus has shifted to social as overall marketing budgets and teams have shrunk. Social is seen as a budget-friendly, manageable marketing option during tough times.
There’s also a broad understanding that even during hardship, it’s essential for brands to keep up their marketing in some form. Brands that maintain their marketing tend to come through downturns in better shape than those who slash spending.
But increased spending during a recession means marketing teams will be under more scrutiny than ever. CMOs will be putting marketing performance under the microscope in an effort to justify spending – or future cuts.
If you’re a marketer, you’ll know that social marketing helps build your brand and bring in customers over time – but how do you prove its worth in cold, hard numbers?
Business leaders don’t really care about cute Facebook posts or Instagram hearts – they care about growth. A recent survey of CMOs found that traditional accounting metrics like sales and profits were used far more often than ‘softer’ measures such as customer lifetime value.
Since February, social media has been making a tangible difference to company performance, with social media contributions rising 24% since February this year.
Growth metrics don’t lie – but they don’t deliver a full picture of social media performance either. Without looking at how people are responding to your content online, it’s difficult to tell whether company growth is really a direct result of social marketing.
Zavy’s Social Score was developed to bridge the gap between social marketing content and business growth.
The Score is based on a long-term analysis of over 2,500 businesses. We looked at their social media activity and revenue growth every day for three years and analysed the connections between social media performance and profitability.
This analysis helped us assign values to key performance metrics on social media, which are used to measure your brand performance and assign an overall ‘Social Score’ that reflects the value of your marketing.
When you request a Social Score from Zavy, we run an in-depth analysis of your social performance on a range of platforms. We look at different metrics for different platforms, and base your score on our key performance metrics from our ROI study. For example, on Facebook, ‘shares’ are assigned more points than ‘likes’ because they reflect greater engagement and increased revenue. On Instagram or Twitter, the calculations are different. Your social score analysis shows how you are performing on each channel, helping you find gaps and growth opportunities.
The final score is indexed against competitors to create a benchmark. 100 is an average score – it shows that your brand performance is similar to your competitors. Higher, and your social marketing is performing well. Lower, and you stand to look at investing more.
It’s a complex analysis, but the final message it delivers couldn’t be clearer. For CMOs and marketers looking to justify their social media spending, it’s a powerful way to prove the worth of your work.
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