Engagement as a success metric: An easy way out for marketers or value for money?

Holding the attention of consumers and initiating an interaction with them used to be important steps in a brand’s journey towards achieving a marketing goal. But gone are those days as these steps have now become the goal itself.

Ask any marketer what they want to achieve with their content initiatives. Most of them will refrain from linking content directly with their business objectives and will end up answering, ‘driving engagement’. Well, there is the catch. Collect all the metrics provided by social media platforms for users — hitting the ‘like’ button, sharing on their timelines, reach, video views to a certain threshold termed as ‘Thru Play’ — and prove the success of your content marketing initiative.

Isn’t engagement such a broad term that people are defining it to fit whatever they’re trying to prove to someone else?

Can these standard metrics offered by social platforms justify your marketing money? Brand awareness is, of course, an important business objective but rather than these engagement metrics, shouldn’t marketers be using monitoring platforms to measure before and after to see if brand awareness in their category or in their target areas has increased?

Smita Muraka

For Smita Murarka, Marketing Head, Amante, considering engagement as a metric doesn’t make any sort of business sense or make a difference.

“Engagement as a metric is looked at very superficially. A lot of agencies report it to the client as a success metric. But, things are changing now. Instagram is hiding the like button. Ultimately, it is not adding value to any brand. Amante has not looked at engagement as a success metric. We have always questioned the agencies. We try to look at campaigns very holistically. Whenever we do a 360-degree campaign, we add up all the metrics and do a dipstick towards the end and see what was in it for the consumers,” said Murarka.

Is ‘like’ even a real engagement?

Engagement isn’t about hitting like or every other action on Facebook or Instagram. Ask yourself if your consumer has that moment with your content where it makes them take the next step or share it with someone else. Hitting the little smiley face or the thumbs up doesn’t mean they even read it. That doesn’t mean they even looked at it. It just means they’re like, “Oh! XYZ posted something. He/She is my friend. I’m going to give her a little thumbs up.” That’s nice but it’s not meaningful.

Anand Pathak

When it comes to likes, comments and share; these are only the metrics for content creators to feel good about it, said Anand Pathak, CMO at Netmeds.com.

Dixit Javia

“It is very difficult to conclude if the user is consuming content and liking it or liking it without consuming it,” said Dixit Javia, Business & Media Head, Flying Cursor Interactive. “In fact, there is another way to look at the metrics where likes can be the first level of engagement and the start of the engagement metrics.”

Nishith-Srivastava

Answering why are ‘likes’ still considered an engagement metric, Nishith Srivastava, National Head of Strategy, Indigo Consulting, said, that this is not the ideal and true reflection of engagement.

“We need to again look at it from two perspectives, one is post performance and another is campaign performance. Likes are mainly considered as a contributing metrics when evaluating posts related to performance from the larger ‘engagement’ context. Whether the audience engaged or consumed or followed the expected call-to-action, just a mere click on the like button ensures it is added as a +1 in the engagement metrics,” Srivastava added.

When a marketer engages with current or potential consumers on social media platforms, it opens a chance to catch their attention for the brand’s content.

Zameer Kochar

Zameer Kochar, VP, Marketing & Member Engagement at InterMiles (Previously JetPrivilege) believes that on the basis of the impressions or unique reach an engagement garners, there is a certain consumer set that chooses to interact with a ‘like’ to the brand’s organic or sponsored post.

He said, “This is clearly reflective that the marketer has managed to get the pique of their interest and brings forth an opportunity to initiate a form of positive interaction and engagement. Hence, ‘likes’ as one of the engagement metric should not be ignored. Having said that a ‘like’ most certainly cannot be considered as a sole primary metric of engagement as part of a brand’s social strategy.”

Madhura Ranade

Madhura Ranade, Head-Branded Content & Partnerships, Isobar, said, “We have already shifted away from ‘likes’ as the primary metric. A simple like or double tap means so many different things to different people – I have seen your content, I like it, I agree, etc. When someone really enjoys your content, they would save or share it – that is where the deeper engagement is happening.”

Is engagement as metric an easy way out for marketers?

The numbers in millions to show engagement is great for chest-thumping. Amante’s Murarka agrees that marketers and agencies know that it is an easy metric.

“The marketers might be looking at engagement from a very individual perspective and not really from a business point of view. Many marketers still function independently and separate from the business objective. It’s an easy way out to report to the management. These marketers are not digging deep and questioning themselves,” she said.

Ranade of Isobar does not think that engagement is just out of lack of better goals. She said, “Engagement is a much larger umbrella. What it means could be different for each brand and hence the KPIs that end up being defined will also be different.”

Srivastava of Indigo Consulting said, “If we analyse brand marketers today, both on the brand as well as the client’s side, there are mainly two breeds available – social media marketers and media marketers. We are facing a major dearth of business solution marketers who can see the overall ecosystem from a larger perspective and create overall broader metrics and then define it for channel-wise objectives.”

Having said that, the show must go on and that’s why most of the existing metrics are driven by this shortcut approach of relying on already available performance dashboards from the analytics section of social media platforms: that and the campaign performance numbers from media agencies.

Value for engagement and its good side

One aspect is in-the-now, i.e. how the audience engaged with a specific social post. It is defined by likes, comments, shares and an organic reach due to network effect.

Another aspect is what-it-lead-to, i.e. based on all these standard likes, comments and shares, how many people actually engaged and followed the expected call-to-action.

A funnel effect of both these aspects leads to brand engagement in effective terms.

Srivastava of Indigo Consulting believes that every aspect of value is now either engagement metrics or its trickled effect to lead generation.

It’s a pay-as-you-go model which is creating spikes. For instance, the audience sees an interesting offer or deal and clicks on it, if it matches their expectations and budget, they convert or else they move on.

“There isn’t any substantial evidence or cases where these engagements have created a brand recall leading to brand consideration or preference after their engagement,” said Srivastava.

He added, “From the existing performance metrics perspective, engagement is definitely adding to Share-of-Voice (SoV) in brands’ category but it is not creating a brand preference in a majority of the cases. Barring the likes of Swiggy, Zomato, Netflix, etc., the social media engagement for a majority of brands today is only limited to amazing engagement numbers adding up to the SoV every month.”

According to Javia, if engagement is correctly defined in the campaign funnel, then it most definitely plays a crucial role to give content a direction.

“It starts from your objective and mostly depends on the brand category and what you are selling. For instance, say an auto brand has created beautiful video content for their bike or car. Users will watch and share because they like the content or because it relates with their interest but it isn’t necessary that the user is in the mindset of buying the product at that moment. In this case, the brand should focus only on the engagement stage. The action for leads can be activated at a later stage, which could be more effective and better in quality,” he said.

Kochar said that in today’s fast-evolving times, the conversion funnels or the various customer lifecycle stages that one goes through are not linear anymore. As a result, at any given point of time, a brand’s key messages are integrated through various offline and online channels of communication. Each medium of communication plays a specific role to amplify the micro-marketing moments that the brand wants to create for its core target audience.

He further argued that the time spent on a brand’s website searching or discovering a product or service or a video view, which is liked and shared resulting in high engagement rates/ vitality rates, are only great indicators that the customer is just one step away of converting. “This should be an on-going continuous engagement cycle through various touchpoints that can be effectively tracked and measured. If done well they will provide brands sound understanding on where they need to course-correct and continue investing for future potential growth,” he said.