Last week we gave some pointers on how to increase your advocacy marketing program’s return on investment (ROI) by optimizing your social media imagery. This week, we’re going to continue our ROI conversation with some tips and insight into what performance metrics you should look for when evaluating your advocacy marketing posts.
Let’s get started.
Choosing How to Calculate Advocacy Marketing ROI
If you want to scale your advocacy marketing program’s success, you need to start by deciding the ultimate goal(s) of your program. What are you trying to achieve with your advocacy marketing efforts and how are you tracking a successful return on investment?
While every advocacy marketing program is different, most programs tend to calculate ROI one of two ways:
ROI Calculation Method #1: Direct Conversions
Essentially, the number of specific conversions attributed to advocacy marketing efforts. These conversions could be direct sales, coupon downloads, ticket sales, or any other specific user-action that a company is tracking.
The more conversions your program drives, the greater the return on your marketing investment.
ROI Calculation Method #2: Earned Media Value
In other words, what is the paid media value that your program has earned? If it’s typically costing you $2.50 per click on your paid digital media efforts and your program generates 1,000 clicks, then your earned media value on those clicks would be $2,500.
When calculating earned media value, be sure to also include all impressions/engagements earned as part of your total program earned media value calculations in order to determine the true value of your program.
Evaluating Successful Advocacy Marketing Posts
Once you’ve chosen your preferred method for calculating ROI, you can start evaluating your posts against that mark of success.
Key Advocacy Marketing Post Evaluation Metrics
Share Rate
Perhaps the number one metric you should look at when evaluating your advocacy marketing posts, the share rate is the ratio that reflects the percentage of your advocates that have opted to share your content.
That is, how many of your advocates considered your content worthy enough to share.
The higher your share rate, the greater the indication that your advocates are resonating with your content.
Engagement Rate
While the share rate metric helps to evaluate how your content is resonating with your advocates, the engagement rate metric indicates how your shared content resonates with your advocates’ own social media following.
The more engagements (likes/comments/shares) your shared content earns, the greater the indication that your extended audience finds your content valuable.
Click-Through-Rate
Similar to the engagement rate, but slightly different, the click-through-rate measures the likelihood that someone is clicking through and consuming the content that is being shared. While engagements are fantastic and an important aspect of any advocacy marketing effort, clicks (especially if you’re ROI is tied to a direct conversion) are vital for driving action.
Additional Metrics
While these three metrics represent the lion’s share of your evaluation efforts, there are dozens of other key performance indicators you can keep tabs on to further optimize your program. These include:
- Email Open Rate
- Video Views
- Conversion Rate
- Program Attrition
- Average Number of Shares per Advocate
Putting it All Together
As you start tracking this data (hint SocialToaster’s reporting dashboard track’s this information for you) you can begin to identify trends. Which posts are consistently showing the highest share or engagement rates? Which are driving the most clicks?
Do these posts share the same topic? Offer the same value?
Likewise, look for the posts in your advocacy marketing program that have the lowest rates. Do they share anything in common?
Once you are able to start identifying which content is performing well, you can begin to optimize your posting schedule to include more of that specific type of content.
Test, Evaluate, Optimize, Grow
As you begin to identify content or posts that don’t perform, consider replacing those posts or post topics with new content to test. A successful program is one that evolves to meet the ever-changing expectations and needs of its advocates.
Once you begin identifying content that resonates with your audience, it’s time to scale that content type and create more content for your advocates to enjoy.
Ready to talk advocacy marketing ROI? Schedule a call today with one of our advocacy marketing specialists by sending us an email or by giving us a call at 855.62.TOAST! Not a SocialToaster customer? See what all the hype is about by scheduling a free demo of our award-winning platform.
