New Updates to Google Analytics May Lead to Greater Social Media Marketing Investment

Google announced on Tuesday a new set of updates to the Google Analytics product offering by the name of Social Analytics, highlighting several tools that aim to measure social media marketing campaigns. While it was obvious that social media played a big role in eCommerce marketing prior to the release of Social Analytics, marketing via social networking sites was approached with some caution as there was no concrete means of measuring the return. Facebook Ads, for example, hosts a dashboard that provides information on reach, number of clicks, and total spend. Beyond that, however, Google Analytics could only tell retailers that traffic or a sale had come from Facebook, but not whether it was through an ad, a share or the brand page itself.

With Social Analytics bridging the gap, marketers will now be able to identify social media hotspots and tailor their campaigns accordingly. The new toolset is composed of four tenets: Sources, Conversions, Pages and Plugins.  Social Analytics will help identify common behaviours and interactions between traffic from a certain social media channel and a website; provide feedback on exact engagement with brand content on social media channels (likes, shares, follows, retweets); hone in on which social networks and specific areas within them lead to conversions; and measure the number of clicks the Like, Follow, +1, Pin, and other social media plugin buttons on a site each receives.

As Social Analytics helps identify where and how to spend time and money in the coming months, retailers and marketers can prepare to launch more aggressive and fruitful social media campaigns, and produce social content that drives more valuable traffic.

While a means for measuring the return on social media marketing has been much anticipated, it is important to note potential drawbacks of such a tool. With the ability to ascertain where the most money can be made, marketers will be quick to capitalize on the best opportunities, and assertive competition for attention and share of mind on social networks will inevitably ensue.

This would consequently lead to higher prices for ad spots or the creation of heavier ad presence. In addition, most people subscribe to information from a variety of companies and brands and if they all increase their presence on social networks, the commercial messages could become overwhelming for social media users, and trigger a high unsubscribe/unfollow/unlike rate.