3 Fundamentals of Setting a Successful Strategy

The Three Fundamentals of Setting a Successful Strategy

SOCIAL MARKETINGSTRATEGY & PLANNING KIT

1 simplymeasured.com

IntroductionHow important is planning? To quote Abraham Lincoln, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

In many ventures, planning can mean the difference between success and failure. In the social marketing space, proper planning can mean the difference between understanding what success looks like and operating with a blindfold.

Though many social marketers try to plan their strategy, they often do so without complete information about how their current programs are performing. Lacking this full analysis can lead to inappropriate goals or missing the tactics that are actually working.

In this paper, we’ll highlight the three fundamental components of the planning process, how they fit into an overall social analytics strategy, and what that means. We’ll explain where marketers often miss an opportunity to strengthen their planning process and how to transform what they’re currently doing to support high-growth, complex social media programs.

Introduction | 01

Setting a Social Strategy | 02

Why Marketers Need a Social Analytics Strategy | 03

The Two Core Functions of Social Analytics | 04

Planning: The Three-Part Process | 05

Audience Analysis | 07

Conversation Analysis | 9

Competitive Analysis | 11

Turning Insight into Strategy | 12

Conclusion | 13


THE THREE FUNDAMENTALS OF SETTING A SUCCESSFUL STRATEGY

Setting a Social StrategySetting a social strategy starts with analysis, as it would in any marketing channel. Modern marketers don’t have to make purely qualitative decisions. The vast amount of data available for any digital channel arms them with the ability to inform and quantify their entire social marketing process.

Social marketers have three distinct needs to address in order to be effective:

1. The ability to define and plan a social strategy.

2. The ability to execute on that strategy.

3. The ability to measure and optimize the success of the strategy and execution.

No marketing strategy is complete without coming full circle from planning to measurement. In order to execute tactics, marketers have to plan a strategy and, in order to plan, they have to understand how their efforts make an impact.

PLAN

EXECUTE

MEASURE



Why Marketers Need a Social Analytics StrategySocial analytics is becoming a more critical component in the social marketing process, allowing marketers to plan and measure the actions they take to execute on their social strategy. But, creating an effective process for analysis remains a challenge.

According to the 2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report by Social Media Examiner, social marketers lack the understanding necessary to developing a social strategy.

A complete social analytics strategy doesn’t leave any holes in social marketers’ knowledge. It gives them access to the information, analysis, and insight necessary to plan their strategy, measure their performance, optimize their tactics, and tie social activity to larger business outcomes.

of marketers don’t know which tactics work the best.

of marketers aren’t sure of the best way to engage their audience on social media.

of marketers aren’t sure how to find their target audience on social media.

91%88%83%



The Two Core Functions of Social AnalyticsMost marketers don’t have a well-defined approach to social analytics. They haven’t had access to all the information needed to plan and measure correctly on their social marketing tactics so their process has simply been to use what’s readily available, or ignore the process of analysis all together. This isn’t optimal and wouldn’t be acceptable in other marketing channels.

As the category of social analytics has formalized, the expectations of what the process should cover has grown to include a wider set of needs and enable both the planning and measuring components of the social marketing process outlined above.

Social analytics informs the planning process with intelligence from several different components of a brand’s social ecosystem and the measurement process by enabling a brand to understand the impact of its own activities.

For the purposes of this paper, we’ll focus on how a lack of understanding on the planning side of this analytics process creates a vacuum for social marketers, and makes setting a social strategy nearly impossible.



Planning: The Three-Part Process Analytics in the planning category involves collecting insight and intelligence about a broader social ecosystem, focusing outward instead of on specific brand activities to define strategic initiatives.

Planning within social media marketing is composed of three key types of analysis:

Using just one of these components as a basis for social strategy is an ineffective way of operating and leaves out crucial information. By combining all three, marketers gain a holistic view of their social landscape.

The outcome of the planning process, when done effectively, is a set of goals and tactics that relate directly to business objectives and follow the S.M.A.R.T. criteria, first introduced by Peter Drucker in 1981.

S.M.A.R.T. defines an effective goal as one that is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound. In the context of social analytics, each goal and outcome of the planning practice should fit into the S.M.A.R.T. framework.

1. Audiences 2. Conversations 3. Competitors

Is the goal well-defined? Does it align with overall business objectives in a way that is clear to leadership?

How is success or failure of this goal defined? What are the tactics associated with this goal, and what is the point where a pivot or optimization is needed?

Specific

Measurable



One of the biggest mistakes of many social programs is disconnecting the planning and strategic development of a campaign from the tactical execution and measurement of that campaign. Planning and measurement must both be thought through at the same time to create success. In Altimeter’s 2014 Social Business Governance report, the analyst firm highlights the importance of strategy and tactical management (governance) being developed in unison.

Each of the three categories of analysis - audiences, conversations, and competitors - has unique components, but in concert, they are essential to forming a social strategy, including useful goals and the tactics necessary to achieve those goals:

If you develop governance at the same time as strategy, you can present to leaders the full

picture: the what and when of strategy and the how and who of governance. - Altimeter Group

Is this goal even possible? Is the goal aligned with an understanding of the audience and interest around the product or initiative?

Does this goal fit with overall business objectives in a scalable and manageable way?

What is the time frame for this goal? When have other brands in the same space reached similar objectives?

Attainable

Realistic

Time-Bound



Audience Analysis Audience analysis is the process of profiling, segmenting, and grouping people by demographics, interests, and behaviors.

By conducting an audience analysis across multiple channels and segments, marketers are able to gather information about who their audience is, what their interests are, and how they interact with both brands and other users on social media. According to Social Media Examiner, identifying opportunities with customers is a major challenge for many marketers.

Audience analysis can help ensure that marketers reach the right audience with the right message at the right time by informing tactics for specific groups, identifying opportunities and risks, and leveraging interests specific to certain groups.

Figuring out how to target customers and prospects is a big concern for marketers (83%). Because of the enormous size of social networks combined with ever-changing ways to connect with people, marketers need guidance.

- Social Media Examiner



Audience analysis can be broken into two main categories with a variety of analysis types that can inform strategy and tactics:

Behavior Analysis: Influencers: By identifying active and influential followers and fans based on audience size, posting frequency, and engagement trends, marketers are able to learn tactics that sway audience opinion and behavior, develop partnerships that build trust and loyalty, and interact with segments they were unable to engage previously.

Engagement: By analyzing the engagement earned from their current audience, marketers are able to identify the users already interacting with their brand, highlighting key characteristics and interaction tendencies to inform content creation, network opportunities, and posting tactics.

Negative Response: Negative engagement analysis is an often-overlooked component of audience analysis. By understanding the reasons an audience has responded negatively, either by hiding a post, marking it as spam, or responding with a negative comment or reply, marketers are able to develop best practices to build into their overall strategy.

Demographic Analysis:Keywords: By analyzing keywords in content and profiles, marketers can discover common interests, characteristics, occupations, and sentiment around specific topics, giving them necessary insight into they way they develop and target their campaigns.Profiles: Profile analysis allows the marketing team to align audience segments and personas to other marketing initiatives. This alignment allows them to develop an understanding of how their social strategy ties to larger business goals.

Social analytics around existing or prospective audiences allows marketers to target people for outreach or advertising, align their social audience segments to known customer types, ensuring the best chance of success, and craft the right content and the right time to suit audience preferences.



Conversation Analysis Conversation analysis is the process of identifying and understanding conversations surrounding a brand, specific topics, or any selected area of interest.

Clement Teo, Sr. Analyst at Forrester believes that conversation analysis is a major blind spot for many brands.

Conversation analysis can frame the way marketers speak about their own products and brand, how they interact with consumers by leveraging the topics that are already being discussed, and what tactics and conversations to avoid altogether.

Brands all too often mistake social media platforms as a broadcast channel and rave about their own

products and services without first understanding the conversations going around them.

- Clement Teo, Sr. Analyst at Forrester



Conversation analysis can involve a variety of factors:

Social analytics around conversations allows marketers to pull out aggregate and specific findings, benchmarking and analyzing details to help create and deliver a relevant brand story in the most impactful context.

By identifying the volume and frequency with which users are engaging in conversation around a specific topic, marketers are able to evaluate the value of their involvement.

Sentiment analysis allows marketers to identify hot-button issues, interests, and an affinity for specific topics among specific groups.

By analyzing conversations around specific products, topics, and areas of discussion, marketers can determine the relevance of any number of conversations, building their strategy around the impact various activities would have.

By identifying the influential members involved in different conversations, marketers are able to allocate resources, set tactics, and establish an overall strategy based on the topics that will drive the most value and exposure for their brand. This analysis, like many in the planning category, will overlap with audience analysis.

Volume

Sentiment

Relevance

Influence



Competitive Analysis Competitive analysis is the process of looking at specific companies within a chosen industry or segment, focusing on their activities, benchmarks, and tactics to gain strategic insight.

Competitive analysis should be conducted on at least one of the following sample sets:

Once the set of companies is established, competitive analysis can be used to determine useful benchmarks and tactics.

Share of Voice: By identifying the share of audience, engagement, or conversation in relation to a competitive set, marketers are able to establish goals and benchmarks that are specific, attainable, and realistic.

Companies competing for the same market share, customers, and dollars. Brands from the same space, or a similar one, that are operating effectively and can provide guidance.

Industry Competitors

Aspirational Social

Competitors



Tactics: Competitive analysis gives marketers the ability to set benchmarks and baselines for a variety of metrics that can then inform tactics. Follower growth, posting frequency, content type, and engagement levels are among the many metrics that make competitive analysis valuable.

Social analytics on competitors allows marketers to discover new areas of focus and tactics that can be integrated into a brand’s strategy.

Turning Insight into StrategyArmed with insight about their audience, competitors, and relevant conversations, a social marketer is able to transform their social planning into a more sophisticated process than the current status quo, simply by organizing the information gleaned through their analysis.

Audience, competitive, and conversation analysis aren’t necessarily independent from one another, and as marketers conduct these analyses, the potential for overlapping insight and information is high. It’s important to remember the relationship between each type of analysis when developing strategy. Information about how a competitive set relates to conversation topics or audience segments can lead to a previously unrecognized opportunity, or an area to avoid.



Social marketers are now ready to go through the following steps, which help them sort through their findings and develop a complete strategy and action plan.

Aggregate: Compile the insights gained from each of the three areas of analysis. For example, marketers can organize and group information about conversations with similar insight about audience segments and competitors.

Align: Align this newly aggregated insight with overall business and marketing objectives then develop tactical roadmaps based on the desired outcomes, best practices, and realistic goals gleaned from the analysis.

Prioritize: Prioritize the goals and tactics based on relevance to company and department objectives, the amount of resources needed, and the likelihood of a desired outcome.

Implement: Equipped with insight-driven goals and tactics that are aligned with company objectives and weighted for optimal success, begin acting to the newly developed plan.

ConclusionTo set the framework for strategic planning, social marketers need to undergo regular analysis of audiences, conversations, and competitors relevant to their brand. With these three fundamentals of planning, they can create an informed social media strategy that suits their current resources and business objectives.

When this planning is then followed up with a review of tactics, including measurement and optimization of activities, the marketer has a complete social analytics strategy, enabling end-to-end social marketing, founded in real insight instead of guesses or instinct.

Simply Measured is the most complete social analytics solution, empowering marketers with unmatched access to their social data to more clearly define their social strategy and to optimize their tactics for maximum impact.

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3 Fundamentals of Setting a Successful Strategy