Why Actionable Metrics are a Business' Best Friend

They say diamonds are a girl’s best friend. They’re valuable, rewarding, and (arguably) very important to successful relationships.

(Marilyn Monroe with her best friends)

Did you ever consider the same logic could be applied to reviewing online metrics for your referral marketing strategy? While a Facebook post or Tweet can be quite experimental, actionable metrics are one of an online business’ best friends.

The importance of reviewing online data stems from the effect that Internet and social media integration has on the different stages of the sales cycle including building brand awareness, accelerating online customer referrals and generating increased revenue through brand mentions.

In essence, collected social media analytics are valuable, rewarding and very important to building successful relationships with your customers; see the connection?

Studying the fundamental metrics that drive WOM marketing can drastically improve your online presence and strengthen your ability to generate social media referrals. Some important metrics to get you started should be:

1. Brand mentions in social media: Having a highly active social network is important, but tracking how and when your fans are mentioning your brand can help optimize your engagement strategy and better target new ambassadors.

2. Customer loyalty: How often are your fans interacting within your network? Analyzing who is mentioning your brands and sharing your content can help guide your engagement strategy to loop in new supporters.

3. Conversion Rate: Tracking conversion rates through multiple social media channels allows your business to understand which platforms best drive sales to locate where your messaging is most effective and where improvements can be made.

Developing a successful referral-marketing program isn’t necessarily a straightforward task, but analyzing your aggregated online activity across multiple channels can help bring order and clarity to the effectiveness of your campaign. Understanding your customer’s behavior is essential to optimizing your online strategy and creating a passionate base of brand ambassadors to promote your product.

So review your data regularly and strategize based on the metrics you’ve gathered. By ignoring such important information you can never know how effective your programming is and how close you are to finding that perfect diamond (or ambassador) in the rough.