Marrying Brand and Outcomes Metrics for Social Media Measurement

Go beyond vanity metrics with full-funnel campaign effectiveness insights

Social media has long been trusted as a brand building channel. In recent years, it has also emerged as a powerful channel for driving business outcomes with the rise of influencer marketing, shoppable ads, and e-commerce stores like the TikTok Shop. This shift has placed newfound importance on ad measurement. Marketers need metrics for social media campaigns that reveal how their investments fuel engagement and impact the bottom line.

While data is now front and center in social media campaigns, many marketers still rely on vanity metrics to measure content effectiveness, which don’t reveal much at all about a campaign’s contribution to business objectives. And when provided by the social platforms themselves, the accuracy and objectivity of the data can be questionable, especially when comparing them to other channels.

So, how can marketers go beyond these limited metrics and understand how different social platforms and channels work together to move the needle? Here, we explore the metrics for social media that matter most in today’s digital landscape.

What are the challenges with current metrics for social media?

Vanity metrics are appealing because they are easily understood and accessible. A post with thousands of likes and shares seems successful. However, these metrics can often be deceiving, because they fail to account for several critical factors:

• Context: A high number of impressions can be a positive sign that your content is resonating with viewers, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s reaching the right people or drawing them into and through the marketing funnel.
• Engagement quality: A large number of likes can indicate that people notice your content, but it doesn’t reveal how they actually interact with your brand after viewing the content. 
• Long-term impact: Vanity metrics can showcase immediate results, but often overlook the long-term effects of a campaign and whether or not your audience remains engaged with your brand in valuable ways.

What defines valuable metrics for social media?

We’ve outlined characteristics of metrics for social media to help you create a measurement framework that delivers real value to your brand.

1. They should showcase impact across the funnel. 

Typically, social media marketers need to know that their campaigns impact multiple metrics, especially as they seek to understand performance with both attitudinal and behavioral metrics. Measurement insights should not only indicate how campaigns influence consumer perceptions of brands, but also down-funnel outcomes like search and site visits. 

2. They should be objective.

While social media companies provide in-platform measurement for marketers, they have skin in the game and want to prove that their platform is driving results. Brand marketers need objective metrics to accurately measure impact and intelligently optimize their media mix.

3. They should be consistent with other advertising channels.

We live in a cross-media world. Marketers need to be able to compare their metrics for social media to metrics for other channels within their campaign media mix. If your metrics shift from channel to channel or platform to platform, you’ll be comparing apples to oranges and won’t be able to effectively gauge differences. 

Key metrics for social media measurement

Top-of-the-funnel metrics, like awareness and favorability, can be quantified to help advertisers understand the impact of their campaigns with consumers during the consideration phase. However, only focusing on these metrics leaves marketers with a limited view of the customer journey. Post-exposure effects on search, site visits, and shopping behaviors are equally as important to measure. This full-funnel approach measurement threads the needle between what consumers think about an ad, the actions they take post-exposure, and why they take them.

Brand metrics

Upper funnel metrics indicate how well a campaign increases visibility and recognition of a brand with the target audience, allowing marketers to understand how successful an ad is in improving opinions and attitudes towards the brand, and also relative to competitors. Below are key brand metrics to consider:

• Awareness: Gauges the extent to which consumers are aware of a brand and/or its recent advertising, specifically the campaign being measured. 
• Familiarity: Explores knowledge of a brand to gauge how well someone knows and is connected to a brand. 
• Favorability: Measures the sentiment and perception consumers have toward a brand, often relative to competitors.
• Consideration: Indicates the level of interest and willingness to keep a brand in mind when in the market to make a purchase in the brand’s category. 
• Purchase intent: Addresses the likelihood of consumers making a purchase from the brand.

Outcomes metrics

Lower funnel outcomes extend provide a more complete, compelling, and actionable view of campaign performance by delivering insight into the actions consumers take post-exposure. Below are key outcomes metrics:

• Search: Reveals how ads drive online searches by showing how people actively consider brands, products, and categories. 
• Site visits: Demonstrates engagement by spotlighting specific websites that people visit after ad exposure, including visits to brand’s site or product pages, competitors’ sites, and other relevant sites such as review sites.
• E-commerce: Illuminates the connection between ad exposure and specific actions on sites that sell your products, including visits to sites where your product is sold, product views, and “add to cart” actions.

Go beyond social media vanity metrics with DISQO!

Powered by our first-party audience and proprietary metering technology, DISQO’s platform is purpose-built to capture ad exposure and down-funnel consumer behaviors without cookies and across channels. With DISQO, you can measure all of your social media ads with one objective approach for brand and outcomes lift. Learn more about our unique approach to busting down social media silos.