The Blog Post below is from Monica Lay, Sr. Product Marketing Manager for Adobe Media Optimizer.

------

To Pay or Not to Pay: Ad Strategies for Facebook

Whether you spend any amount of time using it, Facebook® has become a valuable platform through which businesses can advertise and build brand awareness and loyalty. One recent example I experienced was a business that wanted to do a promotion around the holidays. They were in the process of releasing a new app, so they ran some promotions and gave new users a 50-percent-off coupon for signing up. They created a huge amount of organic content from the promotion and were very successful with it. Now, we all understand that it’s easier to achieve this type of success around holidays or other big events, but how do you stay successful during the rest of the year?

To answer that question, you have to look at two things: creative and targeting. In a basic sense, with better creative and better targeting, you have better performance. What is less obvious is that, because you have better creative and better ad targeting, you will also have a higher click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate. Directly, that means a lower cost per click (CPC) and CTR, implying you’ll achieve 10 – 30 percent more clicks for the same budget, which translates to better performance in the end.

Creative
When it comes to creative, we always recommend jumping on new things that Facebook releases.

As I agree, when Facebook releases new features, it seems that they give those features extra exposure on the platform because they want them to perform well. This is similar to lead ads; they’re simple and effective. A user will see an ad and click on it. They select what information they want to share, and then the email address is sent to the advertiser. When paired with local incentives or opportunities, it becomes a really nice method for collecting email addresses for businesses in which past advertising performances weren’t that great.

So, it’s good to hop on new Facebook features as they’re released because, if you’re first to adopt — and, thus, get the leverage effect of being the first mover — you will likely have higher performance. What’s nice about this is that an audience network will grow out of this mobile space and into the desktop environment, where you can buy more targeted ads across different devices to continue with your social campaigns.

This is a huge step forward — and a direct response to those who say Facebook hasn’t worked well in the past for advertising — as they continue to evolve and figure things out just as the industry does. Dynamic product ads (DPAs) were once considered only for retail or ecommerce; but lately, we’ve seen other businesses leveraging the dynamic retargeting functionality — even those that are not retail clients such as the travel vertical.

Targeting
Another important concept with regard to targeting is that you shouldn’t overlap. Overlap tends to waste delivery opportunities due to a frequency cap of two per day. In fact, separating your audiences is key to targeting specific users with specific content and not overexposing your content to uninterested people. When it comes to customer audience, one interesting strategy is to use lookalike audiences based on your initial custom audience.

Lookalikes involve choosing an email list that’s derived from your first-party data, and then Facebook figures out groups of people — or audiences — that look similar to the ones that you have. This is also called a tiered lookalike strategy. With this strategy, you start with, let’s say, 1 percent of a target audience, and you bid to the right amount. From those results, you select a second customer audience based on the same criteria, or you select the same customer audience and build a second lookalike tier, excluding the first one. This results in specific tiers containing the 1 percent, the 2 percent, the 3 percent, and so on.

Bottom Line
In the end, when it comes to Facebook advertising, you have to ask yourself, “What do I want to optimize toward?” This could be conversions, clicks, video views, or any other metric that your business is focused on. The next question becomes, “What am I willing to pay?” In this case, you want to ensure that you are receiving true value out of your investment. Here, true value means that you shouldn’t underbid — invest too little and you won’t get the delivery in the ads — but, you also shouldn’t overpay. Make sure you’ve done your research on what is an acceptable price for the intended return on investment.

Read the Original Blog Post here - https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/advertising/pay-not-pay-ad-strategies-facebook-s204/

The Blog Post below is from Emiko Matsumoto, Search Marketing Manager at Adobe

-----

Do You Question the Effectiveness of Search Marketing?

There has been a lot of chatter online regarding the true evaluation of search marketing. Current discussion surrounding ROI attribution models has given cause to question the effectiveness of search marketing as well. There are many reasons why industry experts may feel that way, but consider this: The nature of search marketing is undergoing change, but that’s not news. That’s always been the case. The resiliency and relevance of Search in gaining the trust of the web user is borne out of the ability of search to adapt and adjust. Search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search advertising (PPC/SEM) are integral to any marketing strategy whether separate SEM and SEO lead generation campaigns are conducted or SEO and SEM best practices and techniques are used within a more comprehensive enterprise-level campaign. The marketing objective and messages all have SEO and SEM elements contained within.

Search Engine Architecture and Infrastructure

Let’s examine the purpose and objectives of search engines regardless of who owns and operates them. It could be the traditional search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, Baidu or Yandex, or the emerging power of retail and social media search engines such as mobile app stores (iTunes/Google Play), Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Periscope, Instagram or Snapchat, to name a few.

The fundamental objective of a search engine is to represent the consumer and provide a trusted service in displaying only relevant, authoritative, and quality content in response to a search query. The algorithm’s used are designed to ensure that. The search engine is where search marketing plies its trade. The building of trust with the consumer results from SEO and SEM best practices applied to all brand web content and is inherent in that content being discovered, indexed, and displayed in the search engine results pages (SERP). The transference and maintenance of that trust in the brand rests squarely on the shoulders of keeping that web content discoverable, fresh, and of value to the consumer.

CMO.com provides a bevy of interesting statistics that demonstrates the power and effectiveness of search. There are 15 listed, but here are a few of the more significant ones.

Eighty-five percent of retailers surveyed said search marketing (including paid and SEO) was the most effective customer acquisition tactic.
Seventy percent of agencies predict client SEO budgets would increase this year; 47 percent of respondents said there would be a significant or, at least, some increase to their SEO budget.
Overall search spend in the USA has grown by 9 percent year-over-year, with most of the increase coming from click growth.
 

Search Marketing Strategy Explained

SEO, organic search, and SEM, paid search, exist in a co-optimized environment within search marketing.

SEO is a long-term lead generation strategy built upon keeping all brand web content discoverable and relevant on all web properties, including product websites, landing pages for various campaigns, and information websites for white papers, case studies, and community outreach. There is a technical, website coding element to SEO as well as a content format and presentation element. SEO monitors the performance of these websites through the collection and analysis of data gathered from visitors to those web properties. Each web property has at least one key performance parameter and associated metrics that measure performance. The results are measured over the long term and adjustments made as performance dictates.

Paid search, or SEM, is a short-term strategy that is compatible and co-optimized with the SEO strategy. The ads developed are paid in order to attain a favorable position on page one of the various SERPs. The idea is to obtain immediate results to measure the most effective way to reach a segmented and targeted audience.

The fundamental tools of SEO and SEM are the use of keywords and phrases that represent what people searching on the web use regularly that identify with your products and services. Data analytics is a key tool used to test various keywords and phrases in the decision-making process, followed by live testing in a test audience environment to validate the results of what the data says.

The results of paid search performance and the keywords used then feed the long-term SEO strategy in making adjustments and adaptations to the SEO or inbound marketing strategy.

The Future of Search Marketing

As I said at the beginning, search marketing is a discipline affected by numerous changes and the need to adapt to those changes. Many of those changes are coming because of the shift to mobile devices and wearables at the expense of using desktops and laptops to do their online searches. The bottom line here is that the display real estate to show search results is extremely limited.

For example, as Google’s Knowledge Graph improves, fewer and limited search results pages are becoming a distinct possibility. This is why Google built the Knowledge Graph. If Google knows the answer to your question, it wants to surface the answer to you quickly so you don’t have to search around on a website.

Mobile apps are another game changer for search marketing. In reality, mobile apps published by brands circumvent the search engine infrastructure altogether. App store optimization (ASO) in that vertical environment is a future SEO development. Search engines are trying to disrupt that through the development of the ability to do deep linking to mobile app content so that the mobile app online presence can be indexed and content displayed on the SERP to increase discoverability. These are indeed interesting times for SEO professionals.

What Really Matters

The point I’m making here is that search marketing is here to stay.  It will never die.  Adaptive processes, procedures, and best practices may alter the marketing strategies in using SEO and SEM capabilities, but they will always be in use.  Even in our ever-changing business environment, search marketing will continue to evolve to those changes as well.  Therefore, as online marketers, we will need to not only adapt to new developments and technologies, but strive to stay ahead of the curve, anticipating what the future may bring.  It is this staying up-to-date, remaining knowledgeable, and building trust that enables the continued effectiveness of search marketing.

-----

Read the original blog post at -  https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/search-marketing/do-you-question-the-effectiveness-of-search-marketing/

The Blog Post below is from Tim Wadell, Director, Product Marketing at Adobe

-----

Cross-Channel Advertising With Adobe Media Optimizer

A decade ago, marketing options were limited on digital platforms. The focus was largely on search and banner ads. Things have changed greatly with advances in data collection and management, audience segmentation, numerous social-media platforms, video and mobile ads, and the ability to attribute value to the various touchpoints a consumer engages along the path to an ultimate conversion event (not just retail).

And, when you realize that marketing departments always have limited budgets — especially when unable to tie their efforts to ROI — it highlights the importance of understanding which channels are working. It is also vital to realize which types of ad campaigns and collateral work on which platforms and for which audiences.

Of course, this is easier said than done. As agencies and customers attempt to understand, return on ad spend (ROAS) or return on investment (ROI) can be tough to confidently quantify. It can be even tougher to drill down for further insights. To prepare your organization to receive cross-channel insights on your advertising campaign, you need the following foundation:

Data-Capture Mechanisms: If you are not capturing data on your campaigns — including clicks, visitors, users, and the demographics that go along with these things — it is virtually impossible to determine whether your campaign is effective. At a bare minimum, an organization needs to capture the results of their campaigns before they can begin to get actionable insights regarding what is working.

Clean Data: Tied in with the first point, if the data you are analyzing is not clean, your insights will not be as valuable as they could be. Clean data can mean a number of things: ensuring that data is being pulled from all the correct sources, is mapping to the correct fields, or even that it is being collected in a standard format. For example, if you want to understand whether you have more customers in New York or California, you would likely run a query to find out. However, if the data in the “state” field in your database contains values like NY, New York, CA, California, or Cali, this query is likely to miss customers and be inaccurate as a result. Clean, standardized data is a must when it comes to gaining insights.

Cross-Channel Analysis: Once you have hit these first two items, it is critical in today’s digital landscape to be able to understand that the majority of your customers will have multiple touchpoints with your brand before they convert. All brands need a mechanism for understanding what is happening across various digital channels.

Now that you have taken the necessary steps to be on all the appropriate platforms available, make sure that you also take the steps to understand where your efforts are most effective. In this paper, we explain the key points that all marketers should consider in their deliverance of cross-channel advertising.

-----

Read the original blog post at - https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/analytics/cross-channel-advertising-adobe-media-optimizer/

The Blog Post below is from Cici DeWaal, Social Advertising Manager at Adobe

-----

Getting the most from your marketing dollar isn’t as straightforward as it has been in the past. Social media has changed dramatically over the past few years, and marketers have had to quickly learn the art of using social advertising as part of an effective digital strategy.

Why have social platforms evolved? Simple: They need to make money. And most of the big ones—Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, for example—are turning to their communities to secure advertising revenue. Paid social media is a fantastic avenue to reach your desired audience, but if you’re not smart about how you go about it, you could lose ground quickly. New to the pay-to-play space? Try these tips to get started.

Develop The Skill Set For Paid Social
Doing social advertising well on the major platforms requires a basic foundation in ad buying and bidding. Part of your learning strategy can include borrowing skills from other departments within your organization. The search or SEO team likely has experience bidding on different platforms, using handy techniques for setting up paid campaigns on social channels. Audience targeting is another useful skill for serving your social ads to the right audience.

Many of the social networks are beginning to publish their own resources—check out Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. A lot of the learning will start as you begin to test and create your own campaigns. Though each of the networks have slightly different terminology and set up, a lot of the functions are similar.

Learn From the Platforms Themselves.
In the absence of available formal strategies for implementing paid social, the platforms themselves are improving resources for those just starting out. Facebook and Twitter have comprehensive resource centers—and occasionally, helpful training webinars—with information on how to create and manage paid campaigns. Of course, if you spend enough money, many of the platforms will assign your company its own representative. LinkedIn also has a helpful section on marketing solutions for the beginner looking to implement paid features.

How Paid Social Works: What Can You Expect?
Getting started with social advertising is a relatively simple process. Navigate to the ads dashboard and login; this is where you set up your account and create and fund your campaign. You usually begin by defining your target audience and then creating content to be promoted. Within each platform, you have the ability to manage your campaign—whether checking on live content, promoting content more aggressively, or creating new content altogether.

To make things easier, Twitter has six or seven predesigned campaign types that can be helpful if you’re just starting out. Twitter designed these to help optimize your campaign whether you want to gain more video views or increase engagement. While it can be tempting to set and forget, staying actively involved in your campaign is good practice.

When funding a specific campaign, or “bidding,” be sure to set a maximum campaign budget. A defined maximum amount will automatically stop the platform from spending when it reaches your bid amount. Setting an upper threshold will save the campaign from going over budget if you forget to turn it off or pause it. Lowering your bid can also help set the pace. Bid high to start and then drop the threshold as you see it beginning to gain traction.

Build Paid Social Skills In-House.
Do companies need dedicated teams of paid social media experts to be successful? The way the industry is going, yes! Ultimately, the goal of your campaign will depend on what you want your audience to do—read an article, download a whitepaper, watch an empowering video, or something else altogether. However, it’s helpful to have a group of people within your social team—even if it’s an extension of your organic team—to handle social media advertising. They know which content performs well, and building this skill set in-house, rather than with a third party, creates more value within your social team.

Put It all Together!
As social becomes even more pay-to-play for brands, more challenges emerge. Securing a budget large enough to make a meaningful investment in paid social is still an uphill battle for many social marketers. The techniques involved in paid social aren’t excessively complex, but gaining that knowledge is more difficult, as the industry still lacks a single go-to resource to gain the necessary skills. On the plus side, paid social is a convenient and proven way to reach your desired audience. Unlike many traditional marketing campaigns, social media advertising makes it possible to see exactly where the money went—and what value it drove! 

-----

Read the original blog post at - http://www.cmo.com/opinion/articles/2016/8/11/a-beginners-guide-to-social-media-advertising.html#gs.SSKD8ew

The Blog Post below is from Cici DeWaal, Social Advertising Manager at Adobe

-----

15 Years of Defining Programmatic

Programmatic ad buying growth continues to explode. The online advertising ecosystem can be complex to navigate but for those that have embraced it programmatic simplifies the online ad buying, management and optimization process.

Looking back on how the industry has evolved, offline direct marketing tactics and principles have been applied to online ad technology and have now come full circle connecting the offline and online worlds. Because of these changes advertisers can now track and target audiences, and measure performance results across channels on and offline.

How did we get here? Looking back 15 years.

For today’s internet based businesses, online advertising channels like search and display are top channels used to acquire new customers. However, that wasn’t the case for us back in 2000. During the dot-com boom and crash, I was managing direct marketing programs for new customer acquisition at the “first online grocer,” HomeGrocer.com (Amazon was an investor, and it was later acquired by Webvan). We tested various direct marketing channels at HomeGrocer.com. Interestingly, we found that direct mail was the most efficient channel for us to profitably acquire new customers at scale (~$20M annual spend).

A lot has changed since the peak of the internet bubble in 2000 for advertisers. Here is a snap shot of today’s common direct marketing channels as they were used 15 years ago.

• Display – The first click-based banners were sold on HotWired.com in 1994. In 2000, display buying was done primarily through direct placements. Yahoo, AOL and MSN were the big portals around. Advertising.com, the ad network, came around in 2000 and was acquired by AOL in 2004.
• Search – Overture and Google were just getting started in 2000 with the auction-based, pay per click (PPC) model. Google launched AdWords in 2000, began offering PPC in 2002 and went public in 2004.
• Social – Facebook didn’t exist in 2000 and was founded in 2004 the same year they ran their first ads.
• Email – The perception on email marketing was low due to poor performance and offshore spammers clogging up inboxes with non-relevant content. The Can SPAM Act of 2003 helped to legitimize email marketing with clear opt-in and opt-out requirements.
• Direct Mail – Direct mail was a scalable and effective direct marketing channel. From magazine subscriber files to those compiled from warranty registration cards and phone books, advertisers had access to hundreds of marketing lists to test for performance (and all appended with demographic data). Database marketing was popular and allowed an advertiser to efficiently manage their prospect lists and direct mail communications.

With the growth of the internet and access to more audience data, the industry has progressed. Search, social and display channels have had tremendous growth and are now primary direct marketing channels for many businesses. Today we have a lot more options for online advertising.

Advertising 15 years later

Advertisers now have access to massive amounts of audience data, everything from online site activity and web analytics data to offline customer data, and 3^rd party data. Offline CRM data and email marketing data can now be linked to programmatic ad buying platforms. Audience targeting can be done more efficiently now than ever before.

Today advertisers have access to advanced advertising technology platforms to help them manage and optimize their online advertising campaigns. Everything from search bid optimization, display ad buying and audience management, to site optimization and marketing automation tools.

All channels have shifted to programmatic (or automated) ad buying with a focus on audience-based buying. In display, audiences can be reached at the impression level through real-time bidding. Facebook enables social advertisers to reach custom, website and search retargeting audiences. In search, advertiser can now target audiences for their campaigns via RLSAs (Retargeting Lists for Search Ads).

Display Advertising 15 Years Later

For display advertising channels specifically, the industry has changed completely.

Ad exchanges revolutionized the industry. The ad exchange allows a publisher to sell their ad inventory in an auction environment, and an advertiser to bid on ad inventory in real time. The auction determines the fair price for the user impression. This process is similar to the stock market with buyers and sellers, but with display ads instead of stock.

Demand side platforms (DSPs) permit advertisers to plug into the ad exchanges to bid in real time on their key audiences at the user impression level. The DSP optimizes for the advertisers performance objective. The advertiser can bid what they believe to be the right price for each impression based on the available data they have about that user.

Data management platforms (DMPs) enable advertisers to consolidate audience data from various sources, identify and segment high value audiences, and activate those audiences for cross channel marketing on external ad targeting platforms like DSPs and site optimization platforms.

Dynamic creative optimization (DCO) allow advertisers to reach granular audiences with flexible ad creative that is personalized in real time to drive user engagement, conversions and integrated experiences.

Everything is in real time (or close to it). The entire real-time bidding process takes less than 100 milliseconds. When a user visits a website, before the ad appears, an ad call goes to an ad exchange which sends bid requests to participating demand-side platforms (DSPs). The DSPs in play then evaluate available data on that impression (audience, category, time of day, geo device, etc.) and send back bids based on what they know about the user and the likelihood they’ll convert for the advertiser. The ad exchange holds the auction and the highest bid wins. The ad served on the website was the highest bidder of the real time advertising auction. All this takes place in less than 100 milliseconds.

Real-Time Bidding Process

Are we coming full circle between the offline and online advertising worlds?

Many traditional offline direct marketing tactics and principles are still in practice and have been applied to ad tech and the online world.

In 2000, marketing databases were popular with offline direct marketers. These databases allowed for consolidation of various audiences down to individual user profiles, and expanding of audiences using 3^rd party demographic, business attribute data and look-alike models. It gave the advertiser deeper insights into their audiences, enabling them to identify high value audience segments and deliver them to vendors for direct marketing channels. Does that sound like a Data Management Platform in the online world?

Direct mail letters were laser personalized with creative content (offer, message) based on the audience segment.Sound like Dynamic Creative in the online world?

We have come full circle and connected the offline and online advertising worlds by allowing advertisers to take their offline data (CRM, call center, POS), consolidate it with their online data (site visitors, web analytics) and use it for online targeting of ads.

Today marketers can meet their objectives more efficiently with Programmatic

Manual processes have given way to automated buying. CPM based selling models have moved to transparent pricing models. The massive amounts of online and offline data that is available to an advertiser can now be easily harnessed for ad targeting and optimization. Programmatic enables advertisers to buy more efficiently, reach more granular high value audiences, and as a result drive better performance.

Here is how Adobe views programmatic and some key characteristics of programmatic today.

Automated buying of ads across channels and devices

Many think of display advertising and real-time bidding (RTB) when they think of programmatic but it includes the automated buying of ads on any digital channel including Search and Social.

Data driven

Data powers programmatic ad buying. To gain the most from programmatic, it’s all about using and applying data. This includes online and offline data, and 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd party data. Data powers the following benefits of programmatic:

• Enables an advertiser to build and reach high value audiences
• Fuels performance optimizations
• Powers personalized dynamic experiences
• Drives automated ad buying decisions across channels and devices

Transparency

Advertisers have financial transparency into media costs by ad inventory source, and visibility into where their ads are running.

Advertising has come a long way

Today’s advertisers have access to integrated buy side tools – from audience management (DMP) to media buying (DSP) to dynamic creative optimization (DCO) – to help them most efficiently meet their online advertising objectives.

Programmatic ad spend continues to grow at a fast pace. According to IDC, global programmatic display spend will grow from $10B in 2014 to $70B in 2019. 60% of display transactions will be programmatic by 2019.

For advertisers that are embracing programmatic ad buying and leveraging their businesses audience data, the result is more efficient ad buying, better audience targeting across channels, and better performance results.

-----

Read the original blog post at - https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/advertising/15-years-of-defining-programmatic/

The Blog Post below is from Maria Stalz, Senior Manager of Social Media Analytics at Adobe

-----

Top 3 Reasons to Take a Second Look at Your “Vanity” Metrics

Measuring social media’s impact on your business is critical. Yet, identifying the right metrics and tracking and analyzing social media’s impact can be challenging.

In the early days of social media, when measurement was new and available data was sparse, most businesses relied exclusively on so-called “vanity metrics” to quantify success. Classical engagement — the number of “followers” or “likes” that social media channels collected — was the primary metric considered. Fast-forward a few years, and strategists had quickly realized they needed more informative metrics connected to meaningful key performance indicators (KPIs) that reflected their business objectives. They needed to determine social media’s impact on the bottom line to demonstrate social ROI.

Today, vanity metrics have a bad rap because they do not have a direct tie to revenue. Traditional vanity metrics include Facebook “likes,” Twitter “followers,” and “page views” or “unique visitors” for blog posts. While obsessing over the number of Facebook likes you collect won’t necessarily win over a buying customer, vanity metrics do have their place when used alongside other metrics.

Following are some thoughts regarding the role of vanity metrics and how aligning traditional engagement metrics with more strategic business metrics can provide the insight you need to make informed decisions about your social media strategy.

Aligning Social Media Vanity Metrics with Business Metrics — and Achieving Results
Successful social media measurement focuses on the KPIs that are linked to business objectives, with vanity metrics playing a role in rounding out the big picture. Is Facebook growing at the same rate as Twitter? How is the community responding to different strategies and different types of content? Insights from vanity metrics can help identify whether organic strategy is working or it’s time to implement a larger paid strategy across channels. Bottom line? Understand how to use them to complement KPIs, and you’ll know what’s moving the needle for you.

How to Make Vanity Metrics Work for You
Let’s look at a few metrics and the insights they can provide.

1. Focusing on Followers
You spend a lot of time and money building up your following across the multitude of channels and networks. If you monitor your follower growth over time, it will be invaluable in helping you understand what is working when it comes to community growth.

Is your organic growth picking up or slowing down? Many factors influence growth rates, but by tracking follower growth, you can pick up on revealing patterns in your data. Does certain content cause sudden drops in your number of followers? Are you reaching the right people? Digging deeper into the demographics of your followers (on platforms through which that data is available) will allow you to determine whether your followers really represent your target demographic.

Does your brand have too many accounts? Comparing growth rates on multiple accounts may allow you to assess less-active or compelling accounts and make decisions about whether account consolidations or additional paid strategies would be beneficial. It’s also important to look at other metrics to evaluate whether stagnant accounts are still performing well in other aspects such as engagement or click-through rates, traffic, and conversions.

2. Evaluating “Likes”
Analyzing customer engagement can be one of the most important ways to gain insights into your content strategy as well as your followers. Of course, all those shares, video views, and comments should yield a positive ROI for your business; however, if you know what type of content works best for your audience on each channel, it will help determine your investment strategy.

Do people “like” your content but not share it? Not all interactions are created equal, and some are definitely more valuable than others. Categorizing your content by media type, subject matter, or objective will allow you to look at which category drives the most bang for your buck.

Do your videos receive a lot of views but low completion rates? Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn now auto-play videos by default. This makes it rather challenging to analyze video performance. One way to look at it is through completion rates rather than total video views. Which videos compel your followers to stop scrolling and watch long enough to reach that all-important call to action and link?

Is there a correlation between the drop in followers and the content you published that day? Sudden follower drop can be as insightful as follower growth. Understanding the correlation between your followers who are bailing out and the particular types of content you are showing or your posting frequency can help to ensure you keep those fans you worked so hard to attract.

3. Analyzing Page Views
On the surface, page views — counting the number of “hits” your webpage or blog gets — is another vanity metric. No, by itself, it will not reveal how your content on the page is moving the needle for your business. For insight like that, you will need to explore not only what happens further down the conversion path, but also the contribution of the page view to the desirable user behavior on the site. However, using page views alongside smart segmentation and a few additional metrics will help you assess the quality of the page’s content.

Does some of your blog content attract ongoing traffic while traffic to other pages tapers off quickly? This could either indicate that some pages are better optimized for search engines (look at your persistent traffic sources!), or that some content is compelling enough for people to continue sharing (check out your social shares on various platforms). It could also indicate that some content types are more relevant to your audience, so grouping your pages by content type or topic, and then assessing average lifespan for each, may give you insight into what you should focus on in the future.

How many of your page views were “bounces?” If a visitor landed on the page but did not interact with any content or visit a different page, he or she may have found the page content irrelevant or not known how to navigate to content that may be of interest. Segmenting your bouncers according to devices used may shed some light on whether your pages perform well on mobile devices or have loading issues on some browsers.

What is the best referring channel? Do people who are visiting from different sources behave differently? Perhaps one source yields more bounces than average, and a different source drives more conversions down the line. Segmenting traffic can help you fine-tune content that is targeted toward different customer segments and identify where your target customers roam free.

A Multi-Tiered Approach to Measurement
We know there’s value in social media marketing, but being equipped with the right tools to demonstrate how and why has never been easy. With only 15 percent of today’s marketers able to demonstrate the quantitative impact social media has on their businesses, it’s clear that measuring what matters is tough. Business metrics tied to objectives may be seen as more strategic, and they are certainly instrumental in showing how social media is creating value overall. But, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater just yet — vanity metrics are useful for uncovering the reasons behind trends. And, when used in conjunction with business-oriented metrics, they can offer powerful insights into the details necessary for fine-tuning larger strategies at a tactical level.

-----

Read the original Blog post at - https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/social-media/really-measuring-matters-social-media/