Branding campaigns rarely get the same strategy love as direct response campaigns, where a specific action is taken as a result of the campaign. According to the Association of National Advertisers, marketers currently focus on relatively qualitative metrics to measure the success of branding and sponsorships, including “social media exposure,” “increased awareness,” “activity on brand website” or “improved brand perception.”
With today’s digital technology, branding campaigns can be measured and maximized for ROI too! With the right branding campaign tactics, you can report on hard metrics such as website traffic, social engagement and reach, as well as any sales that result from your branding campaign. Here are 6 tactics that leverage attributable metrics to improve the ROI of your branding campaigns on social media.
1. Campaign-specific Microsite
Have you ever noticed the unique URLs often used in TV car commercials? These are vanity URLs which allow marketers to attribute traffic to the TV ad.Vanity URLs can fuse your campaign and brand (campaignbandname.com) and should only be used to measure a specific campaign’s effects. A vanity URL can re-direct to your main site (while still be measurable), go to a unique microsite (think landing page), or go to a microsite that is a replica of your stand brand website.
Marketers can attribute the impact of their branding ad by the traffic numbers to the campaign-specific URL/microsite and any actions taken as a result. Search terms relating to the campaign microsite can also be attributed back to the campaign.
Example: Failchips.com drives people to Mailchimp.com. All traffic to Failchips.com and to Mailchimp.com from the microsite (or for searches for Fail Chips) can be attributed to this campaign.
Note Failchips.com. This is a post for Mailchimp.
Pro tip: to measure one campaign across multiple social platforms, launch them on staggered dates to notice any changes or “lifts” in traffic.
2. Unique Phrase or Hashtag
To attribute and measure a greater swatch of social chatter and engagement, include a unique phrase, coupon code, or hashtag in your branding campaign. The best brand campaign signifier will have a user-generated content (UGC) angle such as “#MyCalvins” or “#WayfairAtHome” to encourage the use of the campaign signifier.
Not only do hashtags and UGC increase engagement and reduce costs but they also give you tangible posts to measure. Hashtags are the easiest to search for (just click the hashtag), but you can also perform a search for your campaign’s unique phrase to measure the number of posts, engagement on the posts, and reach.
Both the unique phrase and hashtag search traffic to your website can also be attributed back to your campaign.
454 likes that can be attributed to the #MyCalvins campaign.
3. Focused Promotion
Focus your branding campaign on a specific service, aspect, or product category. Be sure to use “deep links”, or links directly to the specified section of your website. You can compare any increases in searches for the featured product or service against the norm to measure the impact. An increase in website traffic to that section of your website can also be compared to the weekly or monthly average to show the attributable impact of your focused campaign.
Be sure to make a note of the campaign in your Google Analytics account, so you’ll remember what the spike in traffic to that section was for later on. Also, exclude the spike in traffic from your traffic averages when measuring the impact of a second or third campaign.
J Crew sells more than shoes, but this post focuses solely on that component of their inventory.
4. Campaign-specific Promotion
Feature a special promotion in your branding campaign to measure its impact. Whether you tell new customers to utter a special phrase, enter a unique coupon code, or to bring in a special token (a creative, fan favorite). All instances of use of the campaign-specific promotion can be counted towards measuring your branding campaign’s impact. For digital measurement, you can create a section of your site that is not accessible from the homepage. Interested parties must go directly to the URL (website.com/campaign) and all traffic to that page is most likely the result of the campaign.
The promotion should connect to the overall launch of your campaign. Creative ideas include a lucky penny, fall leaves, “it’s starting to smell like Christmas,” go Cardinals, and the owner’s name.
5. Work with a Media Partner
Partner with an influencer or a website who agrees to share their data with you. You can ask them to share reach, engagement, clicks and website traffic. You can measure the impact on your end by measuring all website traffic coming from the media partner’s website.
If your media partner is sharing a link to your website, apply a UTM code to the end of the URL to track referrals from their posts, as Facebook will automatically anonymize their referring link (their profile or post’s URL).
There is a chance that because one media partner promotes your campaign, others will feature the campaign as newsworthy. These instances of “earned media” can be counted towards the impact of your branding campaign. Additional web traffic from the “earned media” websites should go towards your total traffic driven metric.
6. Retarget branding audiences
You can measure how well your branding campaign worked by retargeting your branding campaign audiences with one of your usual direct response ads. If the conversion rates, or costs, are superior, your branding campaign was effective at making your audience more likely to convert
On Facebook, you can retarget post engagers (likes or shares), post clickers, video viewers, and people who visited your website during a specific period or who visited a specific page of your website. You can also add a Facebook pixel to your website and retarget anyone who hits that page as well.
Pro tip: make sure you have a large enough audience of to make the campaign fairly priced. Small audiences will always cost more to reach than larger ones.