Can there be such a thing as too much data? Well, only if you don’t know what you’re looking for. When it comes to social media analytics, you’ll find that the major platforms all offer you a million ways to dig down into your metrics, from audience demographics to engagement on individual posts, account growth and conversion rates.
So, how do you transform these metrics into marketing strategies? Here's how we do it 👇
Identifying your audience
When it comes to finding the right people for your paid social ads or organic content, your social media analytics are an invaluable source of information. By analysing the demographics of users who are already engaging with your brand, you’ll have a great jumping-off point for targeted advertising and creating tailored content.
Most social media analytics tools offer detailed breakdowns of audiences by age, gender, location, and interests, meaning you’ll know who to include or exclude in your marketing. Creating a data-backed customer persona will help to shape your marketing strategies, both digitally and offline.
Set your KPIs
There’s no point making posts or running ads if your content isn’t engaging your audience - you need to know whether your time and money are being well spent.
The metrics you look at will depend on your marketing objectives. Organic social media campaigns tend to work best for brand awareness and nurturing existing audiences to keep them within the sales funnel. In this case, you’ll want to focus on engagement metrics, such as likes, comments and shares.
If you’re running paid social media ads, you can utilise a broader range of campaign setups to optimise for sales, leads, app installs, and more. Conversion metrics will be more important here, e.g. return on ad spend (ROAS), revenue, and cost per acquisition.
Measure your analytics
Most platforms will have their own built-in social media analytics, accessible through your business account. For example, posts made to Facebook or Instagram can be measured through Meta Business Manager.
Here you’ll be able to see an overview of your account, breaking down metrics by campaign or individual post/ad, using various dimensions and filters to view the data on a more granular level to identify patterns and trends.
You can also use third-party tools to measure social media analytics, such as Google Analytics, Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and many more. These services can be useful for seeing an overview of performance across multiple marketing channels.
Make Data-Driven Decisions
Over time, you’ll be able to gain vital insights that will help you shape a data-driven marketing strategy. For example, your social media analytics may show that videos outperform text posts when it comes to engagement, allowing you to focus your content production efforts on video outputs.
Data for audience demographics on your organic social posts could be used to narrow your targeting on paid social ads, allowing you to utilise your budget for the people showing the most interest in your brand.
Testing and Iterating
Even when you think you’ve settled on the perfect content and targeting, there are always opportunities to optimise your campaigns. Creating iterations of posts or ads using different formats, such as carousels and collection ads, is a great way to repurpose content you already have and find out what resonates with your audience. Try comparing different imagery, copy and formats to pinpoint elements that impact your KPIs the most.
Utilising social media analytics within your marketing strategy can be a highly effective way of finding the right audiences and optimising your content to achieve your campaign goals. By understanding your most important metrics, you can make data-driven decisions across your marketing channels, create content that converts, and effectively nurture your existing audiences to continue engaging with your brand.
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Want to learn more about how you can use paid social marketing to grow your business? Get in touch with our Newcastle digital marketing agency today for a no-obligation call.