Once upon a time, evaluating advertising performance was as simple as looking at reach and frequency. But now, new measurement techniques are emerging that offer much more accurate and useful renderings of success in online marketing, particularly online reputation management. Using these new methods, an interactive marketing agency can accurately measure a very important but previously intangible factor: the amount of “buzz” a website generates.

Bring On The Buzz

Chatter. Discussion. Conversation. Whatever you want to call it, buzz is a good thing when it comes to marketing. It means people think your product or service is interesting. It means people want to know more about your offering. But most importantly, it means people are discussing your product or service with others. In the older days of marketing, buzz was nearly impossible to measure: an interactive marketing agency would have needed to put people on the streets, having staff literally overhear conversations.

But in the Internet age, a lot of those conversations happen online. And when they’re online, they can be easily traced and measured. Now your interactive marketing agency can trace the promoted website, product, or service through online chats, message boards, search frequency, and other means. Put together, these provide a complete picture of the “buzz factor” an advertising campaign generates. And the better the buzz, the better the results of the campaign.

Measurement One: Search Volume

The first way to measure the buzz factor is by measuring search volume. The more people are searching for a given term, the more interest they show in that term. By seeing how often your product – or a term related to your service is queried, your interactive marketing agency can determine just how many people want to learn more. But more importantly, search volume can track the effect of a particular advertising tactic: if there is a particular slogan or promotion introduced and the search volume for your company increases, then the campaign is a success.

Measurement Two: Social Intensity

What is social intensity? It’s the measurement of buzz that was discussed earlier. An interactive marketing agency can measure social intensity by looking at the volume of discussion on a particular topic, examining postings on blogs, rating, sharing, and other “social” actions taken on the Internet. Although Internet and social action used to be completely separate, websites like Facebook and MySpace have begun to bridge the gap. Now, interaction and discussion takes place between users on websites and blogs across the Internet.

In addition to being a good measure of advertising success, social intensity is also useful for online reputation management. By keeping track of the buzz your company gets, an interactive marketing agency can also spot any negative buzz.

Using Online Reputation Management

Online reputation management is one of the hottest fields of marketing. Boiled down to its essence, online reputation management is the process of keeping your name or your company’s name “good” by presenting positive information and, if necessary, stopping unfair negative advertising. Social intensity is a particularly important measure for online reputation management because it provides a sort of early warning system. When there is a whole community of individuals discussing your product or service, negative advertising is much more likely to be caught quickly, and your online reputation management can go into effect almost instantaneously.

Putting It Together

With these newer, more accurate tools of measurement, companies are rethinking the way they measure advertisement success. Social intensity provides a wealth of information, helping to guide and shape campaigns and online reputation management alike. Make sure that your marketing agency is able to generate and understand these new measurements: there’s no reason to cling to the old fashioned measurements anymore.

Marketing professionals have developed newer, more accurate ways of evaluating the success of an online marketing campaign. This article explores those different methods and the benefits they provide to an interactive marketing agency and clients.

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