New study challenges the view of social media marketing, proving it can drive long-term sales

The study is based on Marketing Mix Modelling carried out by Nepa’s Marketing Optimization team. It uses sales data, proprietary Brand Tracking data and media investment data from 1,660 campaigns, including detailed social media data from Facebook. The efficiency of different media types was analysed using statistical models isolating their connection to sales and brand value. Specific emphasis was put on various aspects of social media marketing.

“A key finding is that social media advertising can be strong in driving long-term sales when done right”, says Kalle Backlund at Nepa. “Our insights focus on how social media campaigns are executed and distinguish between short-term and long-term effects on sales”.

According to the results, key actions for driving long-term sales with social media are:

• Targeting a broad audience – this showed to be 75% more efficient than aiming for a narrower audience
• Consistency is vital – campaigns covering a whole purchase cycle were at least twice as efficient as shorter campaigns
• Selecting the right campaign objective – campaigns with an objective of driving awareness were nearly three times as efficient as those with a conversion objective

“This study is unique in that it gives detailed guidelines on how retail advertisers can use social media with greater efficiency,” says Kalle Backlund at Nepa.

Want to learn more? The full white paper with details of social media contribution and execution is available at https://nepa.com/blog/.

About the study

The study relies on Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM), a part of the Nepa Marketing Optimization offering, and data from six retail clients in Sweden across different industries. In total, data from 1,660 campaigns was used in the study. The detailed social media data from Facebook is available in all MMM projects carried out by Nepa, as trusted partners within the Facebook Measurement Partnership program.