Tracking Social Media Results for Local Service Businesses

Tracking your results is an essential part of running a successful social media campaign. Ongoing social media tracking helps businesses evaluate the effectiveness of their strategies, identify areas for improvement, and optimize future efforts. Without efficient means of tracking results, your business would struggle to understand which tactics work, which channels drive engagement, or how to adjust campaigns for better results.

In this article, we will explore some of the key tracking methods local service businesses can use to monitor the success of social media campaigns. We will cover how to set goals and choose metrics, how to track engagement and much more. By following the tips outlined in this guide, you can gain deeper insight into the impact of your social media efforts on marketing outcomes, making it easier to optimize your social media strategy for success.

Why Tracking Results is Crucial for Social Media Marketing Success

Data-driven decision-making is crucial for successful social media marketing. By tracking the performance of your social media campaigns, you can collect valuable data on engagement rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and other essential metrics for making informed decisions and optimizing your strategy. At the most basic level, tracking social media results and optimizing your strategy goes something like this: 

1. You experiment with different tactics and measure the impact on social media performance.
2. You identify which posts or ads resonate with your audience.
3. Based on these results, you adjust your targeting and content to reach and engage your desired audience more effectively.

Tracking social media marketing results and optimizing your efforts can ultimately help you improve your return on investment (ROI). By monitoring the performance of your social media campaigns, you can identify which channels and tactics are driving the most traffic or sales for your business, enabling you to allocate your budget more effectively. By focusing your resources on the most effective strategies, you can boost brand awareness, increase customer engagement, and ultimately improve your social media marketing strategy’s ROI.

Setting Goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Setting clear, measurable goals for your social media campaigns is a key step toward achieving success. Without clear goals for which to aim, you will likely struggle to track the performance of your business’s social media campaigns and make informed adjustments to your strategy. When setting social media goals, it’s crucial to identify specific, measurable, and relevant objectives that align with your business’s overall marketing strategy and goals.

For local service businesses, tracking progress toward social media marketing goals first requires identifying the right key performance indicators (KPIs). Some examples of important social media KPIs for local service businesses to track include:

• Impressions
• Engagement rate
• Audience (follower) growth rate
• Conversion rate

KPIs like these can provide valuable insights into the performance of your social media campaigns and help you understand how social media is contributing to their overall marketing efforts. Remember to align the KPIs you choose to track with the goals you’ve defined so that your monitoring efforts contribute toward helping you achieve your objectives.

Utilizing Built-in Social Media Analytics Tools

Interpreting the data can be one of the more challenging aspects of monitoring your social media marketing campaigns, but you can make the process more manageable by using the built-in analytics tools that come with many social media platforms. These tools provide data on metrics like engagement rate, impressions, and clicks and help you turn that data into actionable insights you can use to optimize your marketing efforts. 

To access built-in social media analytics tools, simply navigate to the relevant section in the social media account(s) you use. For example, you can access analytics options for Facebook marketing via the Audience Insights tool.

Implementing Third-Party Tracking Tools

While built-in social media analytics tools offer valuable insights, you can also benefit from using third-party tracking tools for a more in-depth analysis of your social media campaigns. third-party tools frequently offer advanced features such as custom reporting, competitor analysis, and cross-platform tracking, which can help you gain a more comprehensive understanding of your business’s social media performance.

Some popular third-party social media tracking tools include Sprout Social, Hootsuite, and Buffer. 

• Sprout Social offers features such as social listening and tools for customer engagement and team collaboration. 
• Hootsuite provides a range of tools for scheduling, publishing, and analyzing social media content.
• Buffer offers social media management tools for scheduling and publishing content, as well as for analytics and reporting.

When choosing a social media tracking tool for your local service business, you should consider critical factors like budget, features, and ease of use. You should also consider your goals and choose a tool that aligns with your overall marketing strategy. By selecting the right social media tracking tool, you can improve your visibility into your business’s social media campaigns, optimize your marketing efforts more effectively, and achieve better results overall.

Tracking Conversions and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

Tracking conversions and return on ad spend (ROAS) is a crucial part of optimizing your paid social media campaigns. 

• A conversion can be any desired action a potential customer takes, like submitting a form with their contact information, purchasing a product, or booking a meeting with your sales team.
• ROAS compares the amount of money you’ve spent on your social media marketing campaign to the amount of revenue it’s generated.

Just as you can use tools for tracking social media analytics, you can also use online tools to track your social media conversion rate and ROAS. You can use tools like Meta Pixel, the Google Ads conversion tracking tool, or the LinkedIn Insight Tag for tracking conversions on various social media platforms. Calculating ROAS is a relatively simple matter of dividing total campaign revenue by total advertising costs.

Strategies for optimizing your conversion rate include adjusting your ad targeting, creativity, or placement. The best way to improve your ROAS is to track your social media performance and allocate more of your budget to the tactics that produce the highest ROAS.

Monitoring Social Media Sentiment and Brand Mentions

Sentiment analysis and brand monitoring are crucial for tracking social media campaign success. Sentiment analysis involves analyzing the tone and emotion of social media mentions, while brand monitoring involves tracking brand mentions and conversations. 

Tools like Mention and Brandwatch use natural language processing and machine learning to provide insights into customer sentiment and brand reputation on social media platforms. By monitoring social media sentiment and brand mentions, you can gain valuable insights into your social media audience’s perceptions of your brand and identify opportunities for improvement. 

It’s important to use the insights you gather with your sentiment analysis and brand monitoring efforts to make intentional improvements to your brand’s social media presence. For example, you can improve engagement and customer satisfaction by providing more timely or personalized responses to social media inquiries. You can also try adjusting your social media messaging or ad creative to better align with audience preferences. It’s especially crucial to promptly address any negative feedback you receive via social media.

A/B Testing and Campaign Optimization

A/B testing is one of the most valuable tactics for optimizing your social media campaigns. A/B testing involves directly comparing multiple versions of your content to help you pinpoint the most effective strategies for achieving your objectives. In an A/B test, you will create two different versions of an ad or post — changing only one variable per test — and then test the performance of each version with a specific subset of your target audience.

You can use built-in social media analytics tools like Facebook Ads Manager or third-party tools like Unbounce or Optimizely to set up and run your A/B tests. The keys to successful A/B testing are defining a clear hypothesis, selecting a relevant variable to test, and allocating a sufficient sample size. 

Analyzing your A/B test results effectively is critical for making data-driven decisions regarding campaign performance and conversion rates. By leveraging A/B testing, you can identify winning ad variations efficiently and adjust your campaign accordingly.

Reporting and Communicating Results to Stakeholders

Effectively reporting and communicating the results of your social media efforts is crucial for gaining buy-in from your organization’s stakeholders. Clear, concise, and visually appealing reports can help you demonstrate your campaign’s successes and highlight the value of future social media marketing opportunities.

To create effective reports, focus on KPIs that align with your business’s overall marketing objectives, such as improving engagement, conversions, or brand awareness. Using charts, graphs, and other visual aids can make it easier to communicate your data in a clear and easily digestible manner.

Most importantly, remember to highlight the ways your findings relate to broader business objectives. Your reports should also include industry benchmarks or previous performance metrics to give the data context.

Conclusion

Tracking the results of your social media marketing campaigns is essential for ensuring their long-term success. By implementing effective tracking methods using social media analytics tools, you can more easily optimize your campaigns, improve the ROI of your social media marketing efforts, and generate engagement from your target audience. Ongoing monitoring, testing, and optimization are critical for keeping your social media marketing strategy one step ahead of the competition. If you aren’t already, you should be continuously analyzing your social media performance to identify opportunities for improvement and growth — and don’t neglect to keep yourself and your business up to date regarding the latest tools and techniques for tracking social media results.