When utilising Instagram to drive business goals, tracking the right metrics is key to maximising social media metrics and ROI at every stage of the marketing funnel. Understanding the relevant social media metrics at each phase—awareness, consideration, conversion, loyalty, and advocacy—enables businesses to tailor their content and strategy, optimising impact on both customer engagement and revenue.
1. Awareness Stage Metrics
At the top of the funnel, building brand recognition and expanding your audience reach are crucial. On Instagram, key metrics to track during the awareness stage include:
Follower Growth Rate: This metric indicates how well your brand is resonating with Instagram users. A steady increase in followers reflects successful content strategies that capture attention.
Impressions: This measures how often your posts are seen, whether through organic reach, hashtags, or boosted content. A high number of impressions means that your content is being exposed to many users.
Post Reach: Different from impressions, reach refers to the unique number of accounts that have seen your content. This provides insight into how effectively your content is penetrating new or existing audiences.
Additionally, monitoring the effectiveness of hashtags and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is essential for increasing discoverability.
By fine-tuning hashtag strategies, brands can ensure their posts appear in relevant searches and build a strong foundation of visibility.
2. Consideration Stage Metrics
Once your audience is aware of your brand, the next step is to nurture their interest. Metrics that measure user engagement and brand interaction during this phase are critical to moving potential customers further along the funnel.
Engagement Rate (Likes, Comments, Shares): Instagram engagement metrics provide a deeper understanding of how your audience is interacting with your content. High engagement rates indicate that your posts are resonating well and are encouraging users to explore your offerings.
Story Replies and Poll Responses: Instagram Stories are highly interactive and offer opportunities for real-time engagement with your audience. Monitoring replies, polls, and other interactive elements gives insights into customer preferences and concerns.
Click-Through Rate (CTR): The CTR for links in bio or Instagram Stories with “Swipe Up” features offers a concrete measure of how well your content is encouraging users to take the next step, such as visiting your website or exploring products.
3. Conversion Stage Metrics
At the conversion stage, the goal is to turn Instagram engagement into tangible business outcomes such as sales or sign-ups. Important metrics to track include:
Conversion Rate: This tracks the percentage of users who take a desired action (e.g., signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase) after engaging with your content. This provides insight into how effectively your Instagram content is driving real business results.
Instagram Shop Metrics: For businesses using Instagram Shop features, product views, adds-to-cart, and purchases are essential metrics for understanding how well your product listings convert Instagram users into customers.
Lead Generation Metrics: If you are using Instagram to collect leads (via forms or sign-ups), tracking the number of leads and conversion rates through the platform is important for evaluating campaign success.
4. Loyalty Stage Metrics
Building customer loyalty means focusing on nurturing relationships with your current audience. Instagram can serve as a powerful tool to enhance customer retention.
Follower Retention: Monitoring the retention of followers helps measure the long-term effectiveness of your content in keeping users engaged. A low unfollow rate indicates strong brand loyalty.
Repeat Engagement: Repeat interactions, such as comments or likes from the same users, can be a sign that your content is fostering strong customer loyalty.
Influencer Collaboration Impact: If you’re working with influencers, tracking how these collaborations impact follower retention, brand perception, and engagement is important to measure the effectiveness of your loyalty-building efforts.
5. Advocacy Stage Metrics
In the final stage of the funnel, businesses should aim to turn satisfied customers into advocates. Metrics in this stage are critical for evaluating the strength of your brand’s community and the power of word-of-mouth marketing.
User-Generated Content (UGC): Tracking how much UGC your followers create and share helps gauge customer advocacy. Loyal customers who actively promote your brand through their own Instagram profiles are invaluable for reaching new audiences.
Referral Traffic and Conversions: By tracking how much referral traffic and conversions come from your most loyal advocates, you can quantify the value of advocacy and determine how it supports overall business goals.
Ultimately, consistently monitoring these metrics will ensure that your Instagram strategy aligns with your overall marketing objectives, helping you maximise social media metrics and ROI at every stage of the customer journey.
Partner with social media experts
With the extra knowledge, skills and drive that a social media team can bring to your business, you’ll see results across social media metrics related to your social media marketing in no time.
Reach out the Molyneux Marketing team today.
Research source from Social Media Today.
