Last week I published a business case in the Financial Times where I used examples from Barbie’s recent intellectual property (movie) rebrand to highlight the need for tying mentions in the digital ecosystem to profit so that managers can make more informed decisions.
The digital ecosystem is extremely powerful and has strong implications for brand outcomes, but we often fly blind when we use influencers, partnerships, and the like, because we don’t set up proper digital pathways to measure outcomes that can be tied to profit. We also lose possible leads because we don’t create strong funnels to keep them connected to our brands.
I encourage you to fix this with three tools to start:
Create a Lead Magnet. When you use partnerships or third party influencers, create an incentive (we call this a lead magnet) in partnership with them that you can offer to potential leads in exchange for opting in to your CRM system with their email, phone number, or both. This past week a group of students I was working with was attempting to rebrand a rafting company to the casual consumer versus the experienced rafter. A “how-to” rafting guide was their lead magnet and they were asking for emails and phone numbers in exchange for it. Without that lead magnet, those potential leads and their click data would have been lost.
What’s more, once you own your leads, you can track open rates, purchase behavior, and more. You don’t have to rely on social media to stay engaged with them because you’re talking to them in a more personal way (email or text).
Tik Tok is a great example of why this is important. It was just banned in the House of Representatives. What if it goes away entirely? Brands who own their followers information need not panic. They can stay in touch and create a following elsewhere. What’s more, database size and consumer actions are tangible measurements that can be tied to profit outcomes, which helps managers decide how to use the digital ecosystem.
Code everything you can. Every single time you put information out to the world about your brand (either yourself or through other sources) you should have a clear way to measure the results because measurements can then be converted into financial value. Before we had digital tools like landing pages, QR codes, pixels and site tags, buzz was hard to convert into value, which presented problems when it came to valuing marketing activities on the balance sheet. Now the internet has given us a great ability to measure buzz as action (clicks, slowed scrolls, social mentions, likes, and more) with the tools I just mentioned. In short, buzz isn’t just buzz anymore. Measure it whenever you can. It sounds simple, but it’s easy to forget to build the infrastructure for digital measurement when you’re trying to get information out online quickly. Please plan ahead and create specific and measurable digital pathways.
Use social listening. If you use social listening to track your digital engagements, mentions, and shares, then you can figure out your Net Promoter Score. Your Net Promoter Score is the percentage of positive mentions you receive in a fixed timeframe minus the percentage of negative mentions you receive. I recommend calculating it once a quarter and comparing it to profit. Do you see any patterns? To find the best social listening software application for your business, ask Google for some help by querying “best social listening tools, 2024.” I like BrandWatch and SEMRush but there are a lot of great ones out there with varying price points.
Disclaimer: This post only scratches the surface of how to set up digital pathways so that you have the ability to measure and calculate the financial value of buzz. In 2024, if you’re guessing about what a marketing outcome will be, it’s a signal that you forgot to track or measure something. Always ask, what could you have measured in the past to help you make decisions in the future? And most importantly, can you prove it actually worked by tying it directly to profit?
