In 2017, then-16-year-old Carter Wilkerson jokingly asked Wendy’s on Twitter how many retweets it would take to score him a year’s worth of free chicken nuggets. To Wilkerson’s disbelief, Wendy’s actually responded “18 Million,” and he pleaded with the Twitterverse to help him reach that noble goal.
That Twitter exchange has since racked up 3.5 million retweets, breaking the record Ellen DeGeneres set with her 2014 Oscars selfie. Wilkerson got his nuggets in the end, and Wendy’s earned a flood of praise and positive press for the virality of the social media interaction.
Within 6 weeks, Wendy’s had earned 2.5 billion media impressions and 5 million mentions of Wilkerson’s quest for nuggets, increasing overall mentions of the brand by 376 percent.
Businesses pay a lot for that kind of virality -- it’s a dream come true for content marketers everywhere. But what kind of impact does Wendy’s social media activity have on its bottom line? What’s the right way to measure this kind of customer engagement, and does Wendy’s sell any more chicken nuggets as a result?
How To Measure Social Media ROI
Measuring return on investment (ROI) is relatively easy for businesses that can tie their social media metrics directly to financial gains. When a direct-to-consumer brand invests $10,000 exclusively on Facebook ads and tracks $30,000 in online sales, for example, they know the monetary return of their social media efforts.
But many businesses don’t have that luxury. Wendy’s, for example, does not sell its hamburgers online through easily-trackable lead funnels. Measuring social media ROI can be difficult, and the challenges are in some ways unique to the nature of the platforms .
Nowhere else do businesses have customers engaging on a single channel for so many different reasons. Wendy’s Twitter account, for example, fields customer service complaints and interacts with superfans while simultaneously roasting competitors and promoting new deals.
"Never before have we seen so many departments with overlapping business objectives having to play in the same sandbox,” said Teresa Caro, the SVP of Marketing at Atlanticus. “Each department has its own KPIs, which poses a tremendous challenge when it comes time to measure the impact of any one individual social media campaign.”
That challenge can be lessened by detailing ahead of time what success means.
“You have to tailor your objectives, goals, and KPIs for each individual campaign,” suggests Ben Ricciardi, CEO of the full service agency Times10. “If the goal is sales, then you’ll measure success by your financial return. If the goal is brand awareness, then you’ll measure the impact by impressions, followers, or views.”
But, experts warn, it’s a mistake to conflate the two. Trying to measure financial return on a brand awareness campaign, or vice versa, is where ROI conversations get incredibly messy.
“When you have an organic audience on social, the value you provide them is different than an advertisement,” explained Todd Lombardo, Managing Director of Brand & Social at creative agency The Many (previously Mistress). “The measurement should reflect that.”
To measure improvements in brand awareness and loyalty, social media channels offer the usual metrics like followers, views, impressions, shares, and comments. Though these measurements sometimes get flack for being ‘vanity metrics,’ that criticism typically stems from business owners whose goal on social media is direct sales rather than brand awareness or brand loyalty.
Ricciardi encourages businesses not to underestimate what it means to grow their organic following and engagement on social.
“Choosing to follow a brand means they're sharing something compelling,” Ricciardi said. “When people follow you, they’re making it clear they have loyalty towards your brand and the content being shared.”
Caroline Kalentzos, the CEO of PR and branding agency POSH PR, agrees emphatically.
“We know that younger audiences have no problem switching brand loyalty, so likes, comments, and shares are crucial components to defining a social media account’s success,” Kalentzos explained. “At the end of the day, a client who feels ongoing intimacy with your brand is more valuable than a one-and-done client.”
From that perspective, Wendy’s return on investment is pretty easy to measure. Assuming brand loyalty and awareness is the goal, then the stats speak for themselves: 213,000 new Twitter followers, 23.9 million visits to Wendy’s Twitter profile, over 2.5 billion earned media impressions from 1,076 placements, over 5 million online mentions of Carter's quest for Wendy's nuggets, and a 376 percent increase in mentions of the Wendy’s brand.
If, on the other hand, increased sales is the goal, then measurement gets much trickier.
To Measure Financial ROI On Non-Financial Goals, Wider Is Better
In some ways, the difficulties of measuring financial ROI on social media are no different than the ones businesses face with other media outlets. When Wendy’s earns 2.5 billion impressions, it has to assign a monetary value to that level of consumer reach to get some semblance of monetary ROI.
“Major brands have been doing research around impressions and engagement levels and the corresponding increase in sales,” explained Caro, who has years of experience working with top brands on social media. “It’s very much like measuring the impact of a TV advertisement.”
But solo measurements can only go so far. Evan Berglund, Senior Partner at the Gonzberg Agency, suggests that consumers today move seamlessly between channels within seconds -- from social media on their phone, to a subway ad, to a billboard, and back to their phone again to check email. For businesses looking to tie non-financial goals back to their bottom line, experts suggest widening the measurement scope.
“There is no easy way to financially quantify what each social media interaction is worth,” Ricciardi explained. “It’s much more effective to take all the marketing channels you’re budgeting for and compare it against the general lift or decline you see in sales.”
In other words, a more accurate financial correlation comes from measuring an entire marketing mix, and aligning it holistically with a brand’s business objectives.
With that in mind, we can begin to understand how Wendy’s might measure the financial impact of its activity on social media. After all, the brand enjoyed a 49.7 percent increase in profit from $129.6 million in 2016 to $194 million in 2017. It may be impossible to know how much of that increase is due to the #NuggsforCarter campaign in particular, but with a wider perspective that looks at all of the brand’s marketing activities, Wendy’s could get pretty close.