Social media strategy, metrics and tips from Play.com

The over-subscribed Facebook ROI event as part of Social Media Week London #SMWUK yielded some great advice and some handy benchmarks for those thinking through their social strategy. The impressive triple act of Chris Howard of Play.com, Carie Lewis of The Humane Society (US) and Tejay Patel of Nokia had these words of wisdom for us... (please forgive me if I have missed a wee bit here and there as I was getting it down)

This first post will be learnings from Chris Howard, Head of Online Marketing at Play.com. Over to you Chris...

Thinking about social media ROI and Metrics

There are so many myths around social ROI. The two most common ones are 1) that it is impossible to measure and 2) you can measure ROI, but it's not worth it because the impact is so small. 

These myths are perpetuated because of laziness, location and lack of urgency. What does this mean?

• if measure based on last click effectiveness, yes results are limited, particularly in comparison to  search and affiliates. Search is essentially funnelling existing interest / purchase funnel. Affiliates are effective as they they do the same, driving conversion, often based on discounts and offers. But this is not the whole picture. It is just measuring the last step in the consumer purchase funnel. 
• Social - In social we get to speak not just to people ready to buy, we speak to people not in the existing purchase funnel (earlier), therefore the direct last click impact is limited. On the other hand, we reach and activate potential new / repeat buyers and therefore can gain more incremental sales. 
• Location - where social media sits in organisation. Often in areas that not commonly held accountable to sales targets i.e PR, customer service v sales or commercial. 
• Lack of urgency - often no clear spending on social vs. the £5million you are spending on TV - therefore limited urgency to measure ROI of that channel vs. traditional media

At Play.com they have a new version of purchase funnel with additional metrics:

1. Fan acquisition

2. Post engagement

3. Campaign engagement (metrics generating customer insight re customer interests and permissions)

4. New customers (which is where the standard sales business metrics sit)

Tips and results for each stage of the Play.com purchase funnel

1. Fan acquisition

Tips: Use competitions, 'like gate' to ensure FB fans, cross promotion on email, leverage owned media.

2. Post engagement (engagement being likes, shared etc) 

Tips: most posts drive conversation rather than purchase (around the categories). Each post has multiple calls to action, limited to 2-3 posts per day (timed for greatest engagement - lunchtime, mid pm and as people are leaving work.

Results: by optimising the timing of posts they moved from 5K talking to 20K talking about this

3. Campaign engagement

Tips: Run multiple campaigns in parallel for wide appeal. i.e. trip to NYC with a film or exclusive clothing to different demographic, incentivise sharing to drive reach into friends of fans, ensure data capture for future retargeting. 

Results: 

- Play.com can have 50K users entering competitions per month. 

- Customers who have interacted with Play.com on FB on average spend 24% more than customers that have not in the subsequent 6 months.

4. New customers

Tips: only integrate product offers within conversation posts if it is a truly exceptional offer, include buy now CTA, exclusive time limited offers relevant to our fans interests

Results:

- Customers acquired via FB - on average spend 30% more 

- FB is their best channel for fan acquisition - more than 50% higher likelihood that sale will be (?? apols, missed the rest)

- Currently more than 1% sales on Play.com are via FB and it is their fastest growth channel.

Planning your social media strategy

Steps recommended as your plan your social media strategy:

1. define the business objective your social media will address

2. plan measurement into your SM activity

3. feed the top of the funnel with new fans and use your existing fans to help

4. learn from what works and optimise accordingly

Thank you to Facebook, EngageSciences and Chris for their generosity in sharing this practical and insightful advice.

Up next, the fabulous tips from Carie and Tejay. Stay tuned...