Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Plenty of people have said it before, but Coca-Cola had invested hard dollars to prove it. Online buzz is not enough to have a measurable impact on short-term sales. Online display advertising works better. While the concept seems to contradict what social media enthusiasts tend to tout, it's one of several studies that not only raise questions about the growing interest in online influence but also refute it. After all, if buzz doesn't drive short-term sales where display advertisements might, then what about influence?

Smart companies don't make decisions based on single studies. Of course, according to the Adweek article, Coca-Cola isn't ready to toss out the baby with the bath water. Its digital media team points out that the findings were based on one study with one segment of one company that appeals to a particular customer.

In this case, one with 61.5 million Facebook fans. Instead, Coca-Cola will continue to look for ways to measure online buzz and other popular social media counts such as video views and social sharing. The company, one of the early entrants into digital media, wants to find a predictive measure that can pinpoint financial outcomes — at least so marketers may better understand the tradeoffs among media types....

Web analytics and general knowledge of digital marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) have come a long way since the days when people were measuring “hits” on a site. Tools like Google Analytics, Omniture, and proprietary systems within companies have made digital marketing reporting more simple and accessible for the average marketing professional. These days, you’re nowhere in marketing if you don’t understand your basic web KPIs, including customer engagement and conversion rates. 

However, as content marketing takes the forefront in digital marketing tactics — especially for B2B and SEO marketing — marketers are still stuck in the stone age as it relates to measuring the effectiveness and impact of various forms of content. For example, consider white papers (or any page turn publication) — they are a common lead generation tactic within content marketing, yet most marketers fail to measure anything beyond “downloads.” The question remains: What can a marketer do to better understand the effectiveness of this type of content?...