Page 383 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

Focusing on the Tactics That Count

The focus on social media metrics has shifted from simple measures such as the
number of followers and likes to real-time engagement measures with such
things as messenger apps and personalized customer experience campaigns.
Salesforce (http://salesforce.com) conducted a research study called “Trends
and Tactics Driving Marketing ROI.” The study looked at which strategies and
channels marketers are currently using, the current metrics that marketers use to
track these strategies and channels, and the impact of artificial intelligence (AI)
on their marketing data. They found that the most successful marketers are doing
three essential things:

» Leading new personalized customer experience (CX) initiatives and
carefully tracking the entire customer journey: Marketing departments
are taking the lead in creating and measuring enhanced customer experi-
ences to create more personalized products and services. To do this, they’re
more deeply evaluating each customer touchpoint (each place the customer
interacts with your brand) to satisfy buyer’s needs every step of the way.
Action item: As marketers, you should not be reluctant to take the lead in
looking at both personalizing your CX and analyzing your customer journey.
Consider using personalized engine software. (See the next section for more
details.)
» Integrating their marketing technology with corporate analytics
systems: Both business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C)
companies are finding that incorporating analytics with such tactics as email,
social advertising, and website customer communities are providing them
with actionable insights.
Action item: Work across your company to pull in all systems and data analytics
together to get a clearer view of the customer as a whole. Cooperating with sales
and other departments that are typically interested in controlling their data has
made a significant difference when seeking to understand customer data.
» Using AI tools to drive their marketing efforts through the customer
lifecycle: Consumers have gotten used to the idea that AI will be used by
marketers to dig for insights about them. According to the study, 62 percent
of customers are open to the use of AI if it improves their online experiences.

Action item: If you haven’t already taken steps to bring AI tools into your
company, consider doing so now. The study reports that of the 29 percent of
the marketers who use AI, 50 percent say they’ve seen significant ROI.

CHAPTER 25 Changing Tactics and Metrics 367