Measuring the impact of social media marketing on brand loyalty

Brands who do not actively respond, monitor, and engage with their customers through social media stand to jeopardize brand loyalty or lose them forever. Learn how to measure the impact of those activities to get the most of your social marketing efforts.

Developing and maintaining loyal customers can impact your bottom line more than any advertising you can buy:

• Brand superfans generate messages with 4x greater impact on purchase decisions
• 53% of consumers say they won’t buy from a company they don’t trust
• The probability of selling to an existing customer is up to 65% higher than selling to a new customer

The goal is to deliver such superior customer experiences that loyal customers can’t help but spread the word about their positive brand experience, and turn fans into superfans. Superfans then become extensions of your company and brand.

The first step towards achieving this goal is to measure the impact of social media marketing on brand loyalty. Start by asking yourself these questions:

There’s no better way to measure the impact of social media marketing on brand loyalty than by getting feedback directly from your customers. If you’re not measuring Net Promoter Score (NPS®) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), this should be your top priority. With industry standard question formats, you can survey customers in a structured way to better measure, and more importantly, improve your customer service.

Leading companies in the customer service industry are making these tools available in their existing online community and Twitter customer service workflows.

Evaluating sentiment is essential to understanding changes in consumer opinion and measuring brand loyalty. Sixty-six percent of brand mentions on social are positive. How does your brand compare to this average? More importantly, how is your brand sentiment trending over time?

There are several tools to track mentions so you can easily monitor conversations, but, look for one that also effectively measures brand sentiment. Ideally, one that automatically evaluates sentiment for each particular word or phrase instead of just counting the “happy” words. Once you have the tool in place, determine a benchmark and set a realistic goal to increase your positive sentiment.

While loyal customers may not be actively looking for services or products from your competitors, it is important to know their percentage of online conversations, and where you stack up against them.

Determine your share of voice by tracking the number of mentions your company, products, and services receives on search and social media.

Share of Voice = Your Mentions / (Total Mentions for Competitive Companies/Brands)

Now, look at your top three to five competitors. Do you have a bigger share of social voice? Is your positive sentiment higher or is there room for improvement?

According to customer-centric management expert Curtis N. Bingham, customer engagement is a leading indicator of loyalty. “Engaged customers trust your brand, advocate for you, and buy a greater breadth and depth of your products without as much price-sensitivity.”

Quantifying engagement is more than just counting fans and likes. Engagement is about how involved your audience is with you and your content. The Content Marketing Institute recommends that to measure engagement the right way, focus on these three metrics:

• Conversions
• Scroll depth
• Comments

Twenty-five percent of search results for the world’s 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content (UGC) published via social media. Are your loyal fans sharing your content and creating their own content about your brand? Google Analytics makes it easy to track sessions via social referral and discover where your social traffic originates.

Learn how to get the most out of social media as a brand with our Social Media Pocket Guide.