Apples to Oranges: Comparing Your Brand's Social Engagement to Your Competitors'

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Jason Warnock on June 26, 2012 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Planning your brand's social marketing strategy without takingyour competitors' campaigns into consideration is like shooting into the dark. Whilecustomer insights help you determine how your brand meets customer needs, marketintelligence allows you to:

Brainstorm marketing ideas from competitors'offerings, creative, deployment methodsDevelop campaigns using time-tested strategiesCreate enticing counter offers, in real-time,that beat current promotions in the marketplace

After implementing your marketing programs, you can evaluateyour engagement metrics versus your competitors,' but to define whose effortswere a 'success', wouldn't it make sense if there was some industry average onwhich to base your decision? Let me paint you a picture with an example.

In a recentstudy, we tracked 20 leading retailers over a three-month period (Jan - Mar2012) that heavily target the important 18-35 age demographic. The graph belowmeasures Facebook engagement based on volume--volume meaning the total number of'likes' and comments each campaign gained. By just glancing at the graph, youmay think that Ralph Lauren's campaigns were significantly more engaging thanEddie Bauer's however is there more to this story?

Now, would you change your mind if I told you that RalphLauren had about 4.9 million Facebook Likes while Eddie Bauer had about 73,000?Is it fair to compare the two brands' engagement metrics based on volume alone?Didn't think so. 

At Yesmail, we realized that in order to trulycompare brands' social engagement, you have to control for the number ofbrand followers. After developing an algorithm that adjusts for the size of abrand's follower base, we crafted another graph that compares apples to applesand conveys more meaningful information for marketers.

See how the tables have turned (no pun intended)? Afterrecalculating each brand's actual engagement score bycontrolling for follower size, it appears that Eddie Bauer is a top-performerand Ralph Lauren less so. By standardizing engagement, marketers can accurately evaluate the effectiveness oftheir digital campaigns in relation to their competitive market. In turn, theycan then identify areas of opportunity and improve their marketing strategiesaccordingly.

So, how are you comparing your brand's digitalperformance to your competitive set's? Are you for or against an industrystandard of 'brand engagement'? Leave us a comment below or send a message to@Yesmail on Twitter.

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