MarketingSherpa released a survey measuring the perceived accuracy of marketing ROI in social media (below). Not surprisingly, over 50% of businesses claim they can not accurately track the effectiveness of participating in blogs, review sites, and social networking sites.

In the online marketing world, where analytics play a pivotal role in shaping your marketing strategy, this perceived inaccuracy may seem very high. But successful online marketing is not only defined by click-through rates and conversions. Businesses can learn valuable feedback about their customers behavior. How do they communicate? What makes them excited about your products and services? What other interests do they have?

At Album, we define Social Media Marketing as a Baseline Online Marketing tactic. In contrast to Lead Online Marketing (which includes services like pay-per-click and email marketing that produce very accurate metrics), Baseline Marketing encompasses search engine optimization, brand reputation management, and social media marketing. We define these services as “baseline” because, like in music, they create a critical foundation that often goes unnoticed. They play a more long term role. Performance in baseline marketing is measured more qualitatively than quantitatively. For example: what blog topics produce the most replies? Or, what angers your customers the most?

Much can be learned from the social behavior of your customers. The popularity of social media sites only adds to the qualitative market data available.