Advocacy and Influencer marketing have become much more than the latest marketing buzzwords; they’ve become an integral part of the hallowed “marketer’s toolbox”. From small e-commerce shops to large retailers, B2B companies and everyone in between, marketers are turning to their brand advocates to help share corporate marketing messages on their social channels. And why shouldn’t they?
As digital media costs continue to rise and organic reach continues to get throttled back, advocacy marketing programs provide an alternative channel for brands focused on building their social presence. As budget allocations for advocacy marketing programs increase, so too do expectations. Brands need to show success from their advocacy marketing program.
Where to Start
If you’re going to measure success, start by defining what the goal of your advocacy marketing program is. For some companies, it might be:
- Hitting a certain number of branded impressions each month
- Driving site visits or content engagements
- Increasing directly-attributable sales or revenue
A large multi-location fast food chain is going to have a different advocacy marketing campaign goal than a small fashion-centric e-commerce shop. With the goal set, you want to determine any historic benchmarks tied to that goal. We’re talking:
- Typical impression numbers
- Average Cost per 1,000 impressions
- Cost per Click
- Lifetime Value of the Customer
You get the picture. The important part of this exercise is to ensure you’re comparing marketing apples-to-apples, not oranges-to-pineapples (or whatever fruit examples you want to go with).
Now that you know what you’re looking for, let’s dive into how to measure success.
If Success is Brand Exposure
Harken back to advertising’s early days and you’ll see that it was all about those sweet, sweet impressions. Brands purchased radio spots, television slots, and even sponsored sports teams to get their brand in front of their target audience. Even today, impression based buys are still the bulk of terrestrial-based media buying.
Most of these ad buys are purchased on a cost-per thousand (CPM) basis. The lower the CPM, the more successful an impression-based buy was deemed. If you (or your boss) are comparing your advocacy marketing programs to other impression-based campaigns, start by speaking a common language. For your advocacy marketing program that means looking at:
- The total reach of your audience
- The number of impressions earned through your advocates’ efforts
- The CPM of those impressions
To calculate the CPM of your advocacy marketing efforts follow this formula:
Your True Advocacy Marketing Program Cost / (Total Impressions / 1,000) = CPM
When calculating your monthly cost, be sure to include any hours spent managing your program as well as any incentives you have tied to the program.
If Success is Based on Driving Site Traffic
Is the goal of your advocacy marketing program tied to how much traffic it drives back to your site? Then you’re no doubt trying to compare your advocacy marketing efforts to other direct response efforts like AdWords or Facebook.
Start by determining the number of website visits your advocacy marketing efforts are generating. Look at your advocacy marketing dashboard, or inside Google Analytics, to see how many site visits were recorded. SocialToaster clients can find a detailed walkthrough on how to set Google Analytics up to track advocacy traffic on our