The Most Unnecessary Social CRM Metric

We’ve talked about numbers before here and will definitely be talking about them again before we are done. In order to have a truly functional Social Business and Social CRM, you have to know what’s working and what’s not and be able to learn from that knowledge.

On the other side of that coin, just because you can measure everything, doesn’t mean that you should. I’ve used that phrase here before, but I don’t mind. I also use it on every client call I’ve ever been on when the topic of analytics and metrics come up. You’ve heard of Analysis Paralysis, right?

Most Distracting Metric

Some of you will probably get on my case for what I’m about to say, but let me explain myself before you go all Rambo on my ass.

The most distracting metric in all of Social CRM is traffic.

Now, by traffic, I’m not simply talking about website traffic. I’m also including Twitter followers, Facebook fans, Google Circles and Pinterest followers.

So…

Now That You’re Pissed Off, I’ll Explain

Traffic can be extremely good in some cases. It can also be extremely unnecessary and misleading in about the same number of cases. The reason that I’ve labeled traffic as the most distracting and unnecessary metric to focus on is that traffic is only part of the equation. Only looking at traffic numbers in a campaign would be like saying since ice cream is good, it’s the only thing you want brought to you, even though what’s being brought is pistachio ice cream and you’re allergic to pistachios.

Do you want to be popular, or do you want to be successful in business? It’s true that we all want a lot of visitors to fill our sales funnels, but you want the right kind of visitors. You’ll hear people tout the grandiose number of visitors Pinterest has sent to their site or how awesome StumbleUpon is for traffic numbers, but the truth is that unless those visits are coming from qualified, researched and sought after demographics, it’s not going to be worth much more than a pretty green arrow on Google Analytics.

Website traffic numbers are great to show CEOs and C-Suite executives every now and then (I’ve used them in my reports as explanatory measures for other KPIs), but what’s even better to show CEOs is that the value of each visitor to your website went from being valued at $0.34 per lead from social media to $0.87 in 3 months due to your strategy and sales funnel.

Not All Negative

It’s not all bad news today. Just because I’ve told you that focusing solely on traffic numbers is a misspent adventure doesn’t mean there’s no hope. You can take traffic and break it down so you’re focusing on the right things.

So, what are the right things to be focusing on? Here’s a few:

• Subscribers – A lot of companies make quite a bit of money from their email lists. Email lists are qualified leads by their very nature, so when you measure traffic, break it down to see how many people are joining your lists month over month.
• Open Rates – This one comes a bit down the line from subscribers, but it’s good to know which headlines and what content resonated with people enough to have them open and interact with your stuff. You can also measure comments and engagement on social media channels within this idea too.
• Conversion Rate – You’ll of course get a conversion rate from your email list numbers, but be sure to use this idea when creating promotions. Use custom landing pages and even A/B tested product sites to see how well people are converting into your sales funnel through all that traffic.
• Revenue – This one is a no-brainer: if your efforts on social media = money, then your efforts should be measured and repeated.

So, there ya go. Hope I didn’t make too many people mad, but honestly, if I did all that will happen is my site traffic will drop for a day or two, and I don’t really care about that.

Thoughts?

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