Campaign title: Content impact and quality measurement

Client/Entering Company: Carma

Company Name: Global cosmetics brand

Summary

The Middle East headquarters of a global chain of cosmetics stores features nearly 300 brands, as well as its own private label, offering beauty products including makeup, skincare, body, fragrance, nail colour and haircare. The client briefed CARMA to devise a social media measurement program, the primary focus of which was to measure the impact and quality of content posted by their paid partners and to gain insight into the opinions, perceptions and satisfaction levels of other users across all platforms.

Objective/Brief

In 2017, the Middle East headquarters of a global leading chain of cosmetic stores retained us to devise a social media measurement programme, across all social media channels, to track 25 of their top -selling cosmetic brands. During the pilot phase, we put in place a simple measurement programme to assess types of conversations, where they were taking place and who was initiating those conversations. The pilot was done at a time of three major product launches and the addition to the client’s portfolio.of one global cosmetic brand. This audit was presented to the client, identifying some clear issues:

  • 56 percent of paid partners (influencers) were not posting content within the brand-provided guidelines
  • Micro-influencers generated almost 6 percent more engagement on certain brands than paid influencers
  • Organic content from other influencers generated far higher positive engagement
  • Brand messages and USPs were not mentioned in the majority of content posted during one of their most important product launches
  • Paid partnerships had been expected to increase sales of their products by almost 15 percent, but sales only increased by 3 percent (tracked via specific promo codes).

This lack of positive performance prompted the client to ask CARMA to propose a new analytics brief that would help guide a shift towards much greater positive content and an increase in brand sales.

The Challenge/What is Unique About this Entry

  • Tracking paid and earned media, including content generated by paid influencers.
  • Tracking promo codes, earned media coverage and heavy volume of engagement to sales performance
  • The use of analytics to understand poor performance, recommend new content strategies and measure correlation to increased sales.

Strategy

Considering the average spent on their paid partners (approximately US$300,000 per month, inclusive of the cost of products shared with them to create content), regular reporting on the quality of content and engagement generated was imperative to ensure these partners represented value for money for the client.

CARMA’s five-point plan proposed:

  • Setting KPIs for paid partners (influencers)
  • Measuring the impact and quality of content posted by paid partners (influencers)
  • Measuring levels of satisfaction (via tone), expectations (via user generated content) and identify FAQs (via user generated content)
  • Identifying potential advocates loyal to the brand to invite to events and help amplify new products
  • Guiding content production that resonates with their audience and in turn generates higher positivity and engagement on owned platforms

It was evident that technology was key to the success of this project. To ensure 90- 95 percent content capture for all paid partners and other user generated content, CARMA researched available software and identified the need to deploy three separate programmes. The content would then be pulled into one interface data to be cleaned and coded for each product, product type, brand, sentiment etc. Extensive workshops were held with the client and our analysis team in order to define key elements such as product placement, tone etc. relevant for cosmetic brands on social media.

Knowing the time restrictions for videos, we advised the client on the importance of providing their paid partners with placement guidelines to ensure maximum visibility for their portfolio of brands and to ensure equal visibility. The analysis team sifted through visual content that was captured during the pilot phase to create a categorisation system to help the client assemble these guidelines.

To set KPIs for each paid partner, CARMA conducted a study to identify key paid influencers, and invited fashion and lifestyle vloggers and bloggers to share ideas on what to measure, given that many of these paid partners do not share their page/account analytics with agencies and instead only share screenshots, which can be inaccurate.

Execution/Implementation

The beauty industry needs to respond rapidly to user comments. A negative mention, for example, of a rash developed after using certain products could impact negatively on the brand and its sales. Our monitoring team was instructed to conduct a 24/7 alert system for the client to ensure such negative and/or actionable comments/posts would be emailed to the client within 5-10 minutes of them being published on social media. The monitoring of earned coverage was a challenge, but vital to the success of this programme. The team ensured that any critical mentions were escalated as soon as they were discovered, to help the client deal with the incident in near real-time.

Based on all the discussions with the client, our analysis team designed two modules to help the client measure their objectives:

Product level

1. For paid partners – content posted by these paid partners was captured and analysed monthly. These reports included both quantitative and qualitative metrics, including the agreed KPIs:

  • Message analysis
  • Engagement level (passive versus active)
  • Product placement
  • Quality of content (original versus standard)

2. Other user generated content – content posted by other users was captured and analysed monthly. These reports included both quantitative and qualitative metrics such as:

  • Most liked cosmetic brand/product
  • Most disliked cosmetic brand/product
  • Most discussed cosmetic brand/product
  • Least discussed cosmetic brand/product
  • Frequently asked questions
  • Engagement opportunities
  • Potential advocates (both influencers and micro-influencers)

Brand level

Capturing and analysing the content posted about the brand (the store) to provide insights on:

  • User perception of the client and their portfolio
  • Tone towards both online and offline customer service
  • Suggestions of products to introduce
  • Products gaining less traction
  • Brand loyalists and their affinity levels

Effectiveness of Assignment

  • The quality of content posted by paid partners improved by 21 percent 4 months into this programme
  • Product placement within imagery improved because of the strict guidelines provided to them.
  • A large reduction in the amount of questions relating to the name of brand, product colour/specifications etc. in turn reducing the amount of neutral content for each brand.
  • Highlighting satisfaction levels in the monthly reports helped the client guide effective content for certain brands and to tweak their communications for certain other brands with lower satisfaction levels
  • Frequent reporting on FAQs enabled the client to partner with paid partners to improve operational efficiency and rapidly address such questions, and to provide ample clarification within their imagery and video content
  • CARMA successfully identify 35 high-impact brand advocates with high level of engagement, including micro-influencers who could help amplify the brands’ messages and showcase their new products in the form of tutorials and other creative content.
  • With the classification of most liked or positively received content, CARMA enabled the client to ensure that content posted by their paid partners was in line with audience aspirations, including most favoured and heavily engaged content.

For example, videos where paid partners shot collaborative tutorials generated higher engagement than when done by the client themselves

  • In November 2017, one of the client’s brands staged an outdoor event to showcase new collections. The event generated heavy volumes and engagement for each of their portfolio brands, as well as the brand showcased at the event. The client reported a direct correlation between its 90 percent positive engagement rate and 20 percent more sales over the previous year.

Highlights

Tracking paid and earned media, including content generated by paid influencers. Tracking promo codes, earned media coverage and heavy volume of engagement to sales performance The use of analytics to understand poor performance, recommend new content strategies and measure correlation to increased sales.

CARMA – Supporting Materials