Marketing communication metrics for social media

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework for measuring the effectiveness of social media marketing communications. Specifically, we study whether the existing marketing communications performance metrics are still valid in the changing digitalised communications landscape, or whether it is time to rethink them, or even to devise entirely new metrics. Recent advances in information technology and marketing bring a need to re-examine measurement models. We combine two important research topics and set directions for potential future research. Metrics to measure marketing communications performance have developed towards a customer orientation. There is no broadly accepted opinion of a single critical performance indicator. Our findings suggest that social media marketing metrics have been classified in three groups: qualitative, quantitative and financial. All these categories are required. The shift towards a digitised interactive marketing environment does not necessarily mean that a whole array of new measurement metrics is needed.