I just read a guest post from Scott Bishop on the Spin Sucks blog entitled “Is your brand navigating the social stream blindly?” Within the blog, Scott comments about “flying blindly” -

“Brands that navigate blindly think social media is more or less a guessing game, a craps shoot. I assure you, there is little room for guessing. Guessing costs time. Guessing costs resources. And it rarely works.”

The longer we consult and work with our clients around social engagement we realize how many companies are “flying blindly.” Those companies that are looking at metrics are focusing on popular indicators such as “unique visitors” and “page views” for your website and “Likes” and “Followers” for social media platforms like Facebook & Twitter. These are good indicators of traffic, but I would challenge these measurements effectively tie into key business goals.

It is my feeling that there is currently a ”mash-up” of departments involved in what we are labeling marketing and communications efforts such as social engagement. For example, these communications efforts typically reside and are being managed by marketing or communications teams internally. While the web analytics and measurements are being managed by the web development or IT teams and once leads have been generated on the website, those contacts are then being handed off to the customer-facing teams such as sales and customer service.

I would claim that we (marketing and communications professionals) have an absolute obligation to become more analytical with our support and efforts. The days of laying claim to “branding & awareness” are behind us (NOTE: I still believe these things are important, just are impossible to measure). I say “obligation” because we now have the technology and tools to tie into Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are important to the business goals and objectives of our clients and their management team.

Please take a minute to do a quick analysis of your marketing and communications efforts by asking yourself these 3 questions:

1. Have you clearly identified and incorporated your business goals into your communications plan?

2. Do you have the right measurement tools in place to ensure that your communications efforts are impacting these business goals?

3. Are you listening to these measurements and conversations and adapting your communications efforts accordingly?

I would go as far to say that implementing a communications plan today without focusing on measurements, analytics and metrics that truly impact your business is a potential detriment financially to your company.

What are you doing to be more focused on “Analytical Marketing”? Do you believe marketing and communications efforts should be so directly tied to business goals? As always, I’d love your thoughts on this subject.