Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

But in many areas of marketing, more doesn't always mean better. Take your marketing data, for example. Though having data about your marketing programs is crucial to analyzing your success and making changes to future programs, some individual metrics aren't actually that helpful. And with only so much time in your day, you can't afford to spend your time analyzing data that won't help you make better marketing decisions. 

If you want to get a full run-down on the metrics you should (and shouldn't be tracking, tune into our webinar on March 11 called Smart Reporting: How to Stop Wasting Time and Make Better Marketing Decisions. To register for that webinar, click here.

In the meantime, let's take a look at some of the metrics you might not want to track -- and give you suggestions for different metrics to look at instead....

...Measuring awareness is relatively straightforward. If you’re a coffee shop, for example, the number of people who walk by the front door, stop, look inside, maybe even poke their head in, is your level of awareness.

Measuring trust is significantly harder because it’s subjective and qualitative. Trust is less of a “what happened” question and more of a “why” question, and you can never measure “why” questions with web analytics (which only measures “what happened” questions).

With that in mind, let’s look at two simple ways using web metrics that you can start to see the impact of your public relations program on growing new audiences. The screenshots below are taken from the most popular web analytics program, Google Analytics, but other programs provide (or should provide) substantially similar metrics....

There are so many metrics that can be measured in social media, that sometimes it can be overwhelming to narrow it down to something bite-sized, and find a good measure of success. Since social media also touches everything from attracting prospects to delighting customers in the buyer’s journey, figuring out what metrics to report on can be a challenge.

In this post, I will break down the metrics we observe at HubSpot, how we define success, and how we make that decision each month. And the best part: we'll wrap up with how to actually measure those metrics at HubSpot....

How’s your social media ROI?

Here’s a better question, perhaps: how are you measuring it?

The tried and tested methods of evaluating return on investment don’t always apply quite as explicitly when it comes to gauging success on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. While these tools can be used effectively to drive orders and boost sales, your efforts are perhaps better measured in different metrics, such as growth of community, brand awareness and website footfall, certainly in the early stages of your strategy.

Ultimately, of course, it’s social media’s impact on your bottom line that will determine your success or failure – certainly when it comes to appeasing your boss – and this infographic from Psoshul provides 10 very convincing examples of ROI in social media.