CONTENT BENCHMARKS

Using Social and Web Data to

Set Performance Goals
INTRODUCTION
One of the most difficult elements in developing a social media marketing plan is defining
success and the metrics which will represent that success. With many options and little
precedent, a lot of marketers and social media managers are left asking, “Where do I start?”

First, you need to establish your ultimate bottom line goal. In this guide, we’ll explore
how you can use social and web data to set goals around increasing product purchases,
increasing brand awareness/reputation, and decreasing cost of customer acquisition. After
that, it’s time to use your social and web data to track your progress and choose specific
numeric goals to drive towards.

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GOAL: INCREASING PRODUCT PURCHASES

If this is your primary goal, you view your social media program as being a direct way of
contributing to product purchases.

Your goal is to use your web and social channels to sell.

With this framework in mind, you can attach numbers and date projections to the goals for
your social and digital marketing program.

Current Status: To evaluate where your digital organization stands in terms of driving product
purchases, you need to be able to accurately attribute the impact of social on site activity and
conversions, as well as put dollar signs next to social posts so you can report and optimize
based on business outcome. This includes, for the first time ever with Simply Measured,
Dark Social.

Look at the following data for the previous month, quarter, or even year to understand where
you are today in your journey towards driving purchases:

• Visits to Specific Product Pages: Are your social and digital efforts sending people to your
target product pages? Find out your average number of visits to the product pages you
care about.

CONTENT BENCHMARKS: Using Social and Web Data to Set Performance Goals 3
• Total Revenue: Your job is to know the ROI of all the investments you are making, and then
appropriately assign budgets to each digital channel for maximum ROI. Make sure you have
access to the revenue numbers that social is creating from owned social accounts that your
brand runs and manages. Find out your average revenue number driven from social.

• Dark Social (Private Shares): Content sharing that occurs via text, email, Slack, Facebook
Messenger, and other private messaging apps is often among folks much lower in the
funnel, and more likely to purchase your product. It is important that you understand which
content these people are sharing so you can optimize for this sharing type. How much Dark
Social does your brand have today, and how can you increase this number?

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CONTENT BENCHMARKS: Using Social and Web Data to Set Performance Goals 4
• Final Goal: Once you’ve done your initial research to set a baseline, set specific numeric
goals for each product purchase metric you care about. For instance:

• We will increase our purchases driven directly from Instagram by 20% by EOQ
• We will increase our overall web visitors to insert product page here by 35% by the
end of year
• We will increase revenue from social by 50% by the end of February
• We will increase private content shares (Dark Social) by 40% by the end of the year

• Midway: You should be tracking towards your goal(s) on a weekly, if not daily, basis, so
you know which content you need to improve and which strategies you need to optimize
to hit that final goal. But you should also have a midway point check-in for a concrete
understanding of how you’re doing and a realistic picture of what your results will be. This
will allow you to make major changes if you have to.

GOAL: INCREASING BRAND AWARENESS AND REPUTATION

If this is your primary goal, you view your social media program as primarily contributing to
your brand awareness and equity in your industry.

Your goal is to use your web and social channels to become the dominant brand in your field:
the top resource and/or product.

With this framework in mind, you can attach numbers and date projections to the goals for
your social and digital marketing program.

Current Status: Before you can set your goals for the future, you need to honestly evaluate
where your brand is today. Look at the following data for the previous month, quarter, or even
year to understand where you are today in your brand awareness journey:

• Web visitors and/or web goal completions from individual social channels, and all
together: Are your brand awareness efforts on social converting to larger digital marketing
goals? Find out what your average number of web visitors from individual social channels is,
and then what your total number of web visitors is from all social channels together.

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• Content Shares: How do you know if your brand awareness is improving on social? If people
are sharing your owned content. Find out what your average number of content shares from
individual social channels is, and then what your average number of content shares is for all
social channels together.

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• New Audience: The more people following your brand, the larger your audience and, thus,
awareness, becomes. Find out what your average new audience size and/or percentage
growth is from individual social channels in a given month, and then for all social channels
put together.

• Final Goal: Once you’ve done your initial research to set a baseline, set specific numeric
goals for each brand awareness metric you care about. For instance:

• We will increase our web visitors from Instagram by 10% by EOQ

• We will increase our overall web visitors from all social properties by 15% by the
end of year
• We will drive 500 visitors to insert product page here by the end of February
• We will increase content shares by 40% on Twitter and Facebook by the end of the year
• We will expand our social audience by 10% by the end of next month

• Midway: You should be tracking towards your brand awareness goal(s) on a weekly, if not
daily, basis, so you know which content you need to improve and which strategies you need
to optimize to hit that final goal. But you should also have a midway point check-in for a
concrete understanding of how you’re doing and a realistic picture of what your results will
be. This will allow you to make major changes if you have to.

GOAL: DECREASING COST OF CUSTOMER ACQUISITION

Let’s say your goal is decreasing the cost of acquisition through social media by 5% within
one year. If this is a primary goal, you view your social media program as contributing to your
brand’s cost effectiveness.

CONTENT BENCHMARKS: Using Social and Web Data to Set Performance Goals 7
Your goal is to use your web and social channels to drive more leads, but do so for less money.

With this framework in mind, you can attach numbers and date projections to the goals for your
social and digital marketing program.

• Current Status: Before you can set your goals for the future, you need to honestly evaluate
where your brand is today. Look at the following data for the previous month, quarter, or
even year to understand where you are today in your journey:

• Business Value Driven from Social: Find out how much business value your social marketing
efforts are driving now by understanding how many new customers your business acquired
during a given time period. This will enable you to understand how social activity and new
customers entering your business are related.

• Unique Visits vs. Ad Spend: Find out how many unique visits to your website your social and
digital marketing efforts are driving. Divide this number by your ad spend during the same
time period. By understanding this ratio, you’ll be able to understand how visits from social
and ad spend are related.

• Goal Completions: Pay close attention to your goal completions. This may help you redefine
what acquiring a customer means for your business.

CONTENT BENCHMARKS: Using Social and Web Data to Set Performance Goals 8
• Final Goal: Once you’ve done your initial research to set a baseline, set specific numeric
goals for each metric you care about. For instance:

• We will increase our business value driven by social by 10% this year
• We will increase our overall customers acquired from all social properties by 15% by
the end of year
• We will decrease our UV’s vs. Ad Spend ratio by EOQ
• We will increase goal completions by 40% from Instagram and Dark Social by the end
of the year

• Midway: You should be tracking towards LTCA goal(s) on a weekly, if not daily, basis, so
you know which content you need to improve and which strategies you need to optimize
to hit that final goal. But you should also have a midway point check-in for a concrete
understanding of how you’re doing and a realistic picture of what your results will be. This
will allow you to make major changes if you have to.

CONTENT BENCHMARKS: Using Social and Web Data to Set Performance Goals 9
CONCLUSION
Once you have your goals and benchmarking strategies in place, you can focus on the tactics
needed to reach those goals. You understand what success looks like on a micro-level, so that
your brand is always moving in the right direction.

Having a solid foundation of content benchmarks requires:

• Regular check-ins and optimization

• A firm benchmarking schedule
• Access to the right data, in a digestible, actionable format

Once you have these three key pillars in place, you’ll be able to examine how each channel
contributes to the larger success of your organization, understand how to allocate resources,
and make better strategic decisions.

How to UseBENCHMARKS:
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RevenueGoals 10
ABOUT SIMPLY MEASURED
Simply Measured is the most complete social analytics solution, empowering marketers
with unmatched access to their social data to more clearly define their social strategy and to
optimize their tactics for maximum impact.

Our goal is to put the tools to understand business data in the hands of business users.
We think reporting should be simple, attractive, and accessible for everyone – not just data
scientists. Our software streamlines the process from data to deliverables and eliminates the
countless hours spent on everyday reporting tasks. We do this by putting cloud data sources
at your fingertips, providing a marketplace of best practice reports, and allowing you to
generate beautiful solutions on the web, in Excel, and in PowerPoint with a couple of clicks.

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