How Effective Is Your Social Marketing? How to Track and Capture Leads

You are creating content, distributing it via social networks and engaging with your prospects. Great, but is it working? Are you tracking what is having the most impact, including who clicks through from your social media activity and who converts from each specific social media campaign, channel and message? 

The latest statistics suggest 70% of people are not tracking at this level. Many tools claim they can help you with this task and last week I put Oktopost to the test. With Oktopost I tracked:

• leads from the landing page form which came directly from my social media campaign and the specific posts they clicked on
• which platforms led to most click throughs and how many of these became conversions, in my case conversions were completing the download form
• which LinkedIn groups generated the most clicks and conversions
• which messages and posts generated the most clicks and conversions

This data has already led me to rethink how I approach such campaigns and importantly demonstrated very clearly which social media activity delivers the greatest return. I have set out below how this works with Oktopost.

The Campaign Set Up

Oktopost is social media software designed for B2B marketers with a specific focus on LinkedIn. Over 4 days last week I set up a small campaign with Oktopost and I have been reviewing how easy it is to monitor activity and capture lead details which can be tracked back to specific social media postings.

The campaign set up was relatively simple, I set up a series of posts for Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ encouraging people to download a free Google+ Playbook for B2B Marketing. Oktopost uses bit.ly links to track these links for each post and network. I also set up a landing page form on my Anders Pink site to capture lead details for the downloads and had to include some tracking code on the form and the thank you page.

Campaign Analytics - Tracking Clicks, Leads and Conversions

Okotpost provides for your campaign a standard analytics overview which shows the high level number of posts, clicks and conversions. It also shows the platforms that generated most activity and clicks over time. This is not so different from say tools such as Hootsuite which also track click activity.

Oktopost then allows you to drill down and see how the various posts and platforms performed. In terms of message performance I can see that my message that started with "Essential reading for B2B marketers"performed best with most click throughs and conversions. I can also see the LinkedIn message also performed the best in terms of conversions, with 11 of the 41 clicks converting.

Tracking LinkedIn Group Marketing

With Oktopost I can dive a little deeper and look at the LinkedIn performance. I posted the same message to three LinkedIn Groups, the Social Media Marketing Group, my own Anders Pink Group and the UK B2B marketing Group. Oktopost shows me very clearly that the Social Media Marketing Group engaged most with the post with 39 clicks and 10 conversions. This was a very limited test but you can begin to see how easily you can track the effectiveness of the various LinkedIn groups.

Tracking Comments and Reshares

With Oktopost's Social Inbox feature I could also see which posts were commented  on or reshared. I can open and view each of these and comment or reply directly from within Oktopost without going to each LinkedIn group. I really like this feature.

Tracking and Capturing Leads

I had a good look at the lead capture features that Oktopost provides. In my case most of the leads I captured from my download form came from other sources and not the social media campaign. However, Oktopost did highlight which leads came directly from the social media posts in the social media campaign I set up. In the example screen below Oktopost shows each lead with the person's name and email address. I have blurred the details below.

I can then click on a specific individual to get the detailed screen below which shows me their location in a map style, company (which was in my form) and their interactions with my campaigns. Once an individuals details have been recorded Oktopost can go back and forward to pick up all of their interactions with your campaigns. I can also click on the third column headed Source to see which specific message or post they clicked on to arrive at the landing page and complete the form.

Summary

In summary, with Oktopost I can see very clearly which messages and platforms are working for a particular campaign; I can drill down into areas such as the performance of different LinkedIn groups in terms of clicks and conversions; and I can track specific leads back to the posts or messages which drove them to the landing page and subsequent pages. Whilst not all of my landing page leads came from the social media campaign I can very clearly see which ones did and where they came from. Thus as and when the leads convert into customers I can see clearly which ones came from my initial social media campaign.

Oktopost also integrates with tools such as Salesforce, Marketo and Hubspot to allow you to take lead and sales value analysis further, though I didn't test these features. In my view the ability to compare clicks and conversions by messages, platforms and specific LinkedIn groups is very powerful and has led me to rethink and adjust how I approach campaigns.

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