Social media has become an integral part of many B2B/B2C marketing organizations. Whether it be Tweeting, creating fan pages on Facebook or posting information in LinkedIn groups, most B2B companies have begun to embrace this growing medium. But like any channel, marketers want to be able to track the effectiveness of it.
Utilizing Eloqua, here are 2 simple ways that can help you better track your social media effectiveness:
1. Creating Unique Landing Pages For Each Social Media Platform
Utilizing Eloqua Hypersite PURL pages, a simple way to uniquely track page visitors via various social media channels is to copy existing campaign landing pages that you have created to generate “new” ones. The reason for this is that when you copy a page, you are generating a new URL that you are able to use specifically on sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. With this, you can uniquely track how many visitors (both known and unknown) are visiting your landing page through specific social media sites by campaign and by channel.
2. Tracking Conversions/Net New Names Through Form Submissions
In some cases, the landing page that you have copied may also have a form on it, which gives you a perfect opportunity to track how many conversions you are generating through a specific social media site as well. However, there are a few things that you should consider with your form:
- If your form has many fields on it, you will want to consider limiting the amount of information you ask for. Social media is meant to provide an easy way for people to access information, so start by only asking for a few pieces of information, such as email address and first name.
- A best practice for form configuration is to have a process to capture the Lead Source of names who enter into your database. In the past, I have typically created a hidden HTML field on my form that has a value of “Twitter” or “LinkedIn”, so that when I run an analysis on a database, I can easily segment and report on those who were added via a social media site (*note – your company may have a specific naming convention for lead source, so incorporating the name of the social site into that will also help with reporting/segmentation). Even if the conversions generated are not related to net new names, form data reporting can assist with showing how many submissions came via a social media site in relation to the lead source of the submission.
By capturing the source of these net new names, there are many types of ways that you can report on them over time:
- If you have a lead scoring program in place, you can determine the quality of the names you are generating
- What is the basic profile of a person created through a social media site (ie. what sort of titles do they have?)
- Within your CRM, you could track these names against any opportunities generated
By utilizing these two simple methods, you will be able to get a better sense as to how big a part social media is playing into your marketing efforts.
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