How to Measure the Success of Your Social Enterprise Marketing Efforts

By Paul Feith, Paul Gregory Media

Social enterprises face the unique challenge of balancing their social mission with their need to generate revenue. This can make it difficult to measure the success of their marketing efforts. However, measuring the success of your social enterprise marketing efforts is essential to ensure that you’re making the most of your resources and achieving your goals.

Here are a few key metrics that you should track:

• Reach: This metric measures the number of people who see your marketing messages. Reach can be measured through impressions, unique visitors, and social media followers.
• Engagement: This metric measures how people interact with your marketing messages. Engagement can be measured through likes, shares, comments, and click-through rates.
• Conversions: This metric measures the number of people who take a desired action after seeing your marketing messages. Conversions can be measured through sales, donations, and sign-ups.
• Brand awareness: This metric measures how well people recognize and remember your social enterprise. Brand awareness can be measured through surveys and social media listening.
• Return on investment (ROI): This metric measures the amount of money you earn back for every dollar you spend on marketing. ROI can be calculated by dividing your total revenue by your total marketing costs.

In addition to these quantitative metrics, you should also track qualitative metrics, such as customer satisfaction and brand sentiment. These metrics can help you understand how your marketing efforts are impacting your customers and your brand.

Once you have identified the metrics that you want to track, you need to set goals for each metric. Your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

For example, you might set a goal to increase your reach by 10% in the next quarter. Or, you might set a goal to increase your conversion rate by 2% in the next month.

Once you have set your goals, you need to track your progress on a regular basis. This will help you identify areas where you need to improve your marketing efforts.

Here are a few action steps that you can consider undertaking:

• Use social media analytics tools to track your reach and engagement. While HootSuite is a good-enough tool for beginners, more robust tools like Buffer or Sprout Social really help you measure keep performance indicators (KPIs) like reach, growth, and engagement. While some months may be better than others, you will want to see steady audience and engagement growth over the course of a 6 month period. You can even compare your stats to other organizations using social media.
• Use Google Analytics to track your conversions. Now that we’re in GA4 territory (Google Analytics v4.0), it’s easier than ever to track traffic to your website from your marketing campaigns. Hint: use UTM codes at the end of your Call-to-Action (CTA) links to track specific campaigns.
• Conduct surveys to measure brand awareness and customer satisfaction. We Love Survey Monkey, and Emma by Marigold.
• Use social media listening tools to track brand sentiment. Robust Listening tools are available with Sprout Social, Brandwatch, Meltwater, and many others. Some are free.
• Set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals for your social enterprise marketing efforts.
• Track your progress on a regular basis and make adjustments to your marketing strategy as needed. Many social media apps allow you to schedule weekly and monthly reports.

By following these steps, you can measure the success of your social enterprise marketing efforts and ensure that you’re making the most of your resources.

Paul Feith is the President of Paul Gregory Media, an 18-year old digital marketing agency and certified B-Corporation devoted to nonprofits and purpose-driven organizations.