My previous blogs have discussed how distribution strategies can effect whether content goes viral, what makes people want to share viral content and questioned whether or not viral marketing is the be all and end all of modern day marketing. Possibly the most important questions that businesses may ask is; how can we measure the success of our viral campaign?
The first and obvious way to measure the success of a marketing campaign is to record whether target qualified leads are generated and therefore an increase in brand awareness achieved. However, it is difficult to attribute a lead or sale directly to the campaign itself. Furthermore, Bazadonna (2006) indicates that the current practice of measuring the number of “hits” or “impressions” does little more than define the level of activity, and is not a suitable measure of the success of a viral campaign.
A secondary measure involves measuring engagement: user behavior and interaction with the campaign. Viral marketing is one strategy for achieving a specific goal, and only in relation to this goal can a firm evaluate the viral reach and effect of each campaign. Oddcast (2010) published that viral marketing generally has one of the following three goals:
- Lead Generation
- Brand Exposure
- Conversion
Further information can be found at http://www.oddcast.com/pdf/Oddcast_Reporting.pdf
A viral campaign can have millions of users and hundreds of thousands of posts to Facebook, but if it does not actually achieve its foundational goal then a firm can hardly define it a success. User sessions, emails sent, time spent on the application – all are meaningless unless the campaign makes progress towards a defined and measurable goal.
Helm (2000) suggests that the target of viral marketers is to maximise reach. She argues that this criterion is vital in achieving competitive advantage through a viral message; however, there is no empirical evidence to support this. In contrast, Juvertson (2000) indicates that an ideal viral message will convert and retain a large number of recipients as new users, so he advocates penetration, loyalty and frequency as appropriate evaluative criteria. Welker (2002) suggested that viral efforts should be measured in the dimensions of velocity (speed with which it is shared), persistence (how long it is repeatedly posted on social media) and transmission convenience (simplicity in regards to ease of sharing, but also cost of producing to the firm).
It seems then, that there is no agreed upon way to measure the success of a viral marketing campaign. The approaches used to measure and evaluate the relative success of viral marketing are many and varied. They range from changes in attitude and behaviour, including the number of new users or levels of loyalty, to measures of reach, frequency, penetration, speed of transmission and the content of conversations, to mention a few (Cruz & Fill, 2008).
Viral marketing is a developing and emerging sector and it is important that agencies are able to understand how viral marketing works, in order to be able to evaluate the contribution this type of campaign makes to a firm’s marketing communications. It seems apparent clear objectives need to be set prior to any evaluation exercise, in order to understand what it is the firm is attempting to measure. However, broad objectives alone are insufficient and specific evaluation criteria are necessary to provide suitable campaign measurement (Cruz & Fill, 2008). Lake (2009) states that before starting a viral campaign it is best to benchmark where the firms current metrics stand, suggesting:
- Make a note of the obvious numbers (number of Facebook fans, Twitter followers, digital links, bookmarks and referrals from social media sites, plus existing website traffic).
- Make a note of the less obvious benchmarks (such as SEO rankings and referrals, customer satisfaction scores and other business data).
- Make a note of ROI benchmarks. How much are you paying to acquire customers via other marketing channels? How vast is that advertising budget, and how is it being split up? And what proportion is being directed into channels that you cannot accurately measure?
Lake (2009) goes on to give his top 10 ways to measure a viral campaign’s success, for further information click this link – Chris Lake Top 10 Tips
References
Bazadonna, D. (2006), “Getting viral” [Online] < www.clickz.com/experts/archives/design/site_dev/article.php/830401 > [Accessed 28 April 2015]
Cruz, D. & Fill, C. (2008) “Evaluating viral marketing: isolating the key criteria”, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 26 Iss: 7, pp.743 – 758
Helm, S. (2000), “Viral marketing: establishing customer relationship by ‘word‐of‐mouse’”, Electronic Markets, Vol. 10 No. 3, pp. 158‐61.
Juvertson, S. (2000), “What is viral marketing?”, Draper Fisher Juvertson. [Online] < www.dfj.com/cgi‐bin/artman/publish/printer_steve_may00.shtml > [Accessed 28 April 2015]
Lake, C. (2009) 10 Ways to Measure Social Media Success [Online < https://econsultancy.com/blog/3407-10-ways-to-measure-social-media-success/ > [Accessed 28 April 2015]
Oddcast (2010) Oddcast Reporting [Online] < http://www.oddcast.com/pdf/Oddcast_Reporting.pdf > [Accessed 28 April 2015]
Welker, C.B. (2002), “The paradigm of viral communications”, Information Services & Use, Vol. 22, pp. 3‐8.
A viral post is one that spreads quickly on social media and reaches much beyond your current number of followers. The bulk of postings have a short life expectancy – they don’t obtain a large number of likes immediately, thus they don’t touch a large number of people. However, postings that instantly capture the attention of followers and generate a huge number of likes and shares in a short period of time are very likely to go viral!