Here’s a strategy to answer business questions by deploying Learning Agendas at the center of your social marketing campaigns. It builds on John Terrana‘s recent guest post for SocialTimes on the transformational power of social advertising data.

What is a learning agenda?

Marketers know exactly who their creative is reaching on social advertising platforms and what relationships those people have to their brand. As a result, they can configure campaigns to answer strategic business questions even as they reach and surpass conventional advertising goals.

How to ensure that learning agendas are successful

1. Think about learning agendas over the long term: It can be compelling to try to answer a series of questions in one test through a single ad campaign. However, the best learning agendas are structured, patient and logical. This means that marketers should plan to launch a series of tests guided by learning agendas over a longer period (one year or quarter), with each test building on the last with a unique and specific insight.
2. Configure campaigns for significance: Ensure that tests are configured with the proper variables, controls, spend and audiences to yield learnings that are statistically significant and trustworthy.
3. Budget time to analyze learnings after campaigns conclude: Social moves quickly. However, marketers must ensure that they have time to understand the insights that surface after a campaign concludes, executing a thorough quality analysis and cementing next steps before taking more action.
4. Ensure that questions in a learning agenda are answerable: Due to certain platform restrictions around reporting and measurement, some questions cannot be answered. Ensure that sufficient data can be returned to answer business questions before activating learning agendas.
5. Port learnings into channels beyond social: Social can answer many questions that your business cares about. For example, how do prospects respond to creative differently than existing customers? What is the optimal message length? What are the best practices for sequential messaging? Socialize these insights beyond the social advertising department so they can drive greater overall impact.
6. Ensure that your marketing partners are capable of leading learning agendas: Executing a strategic learning agenda properly requires deep expertise and experience in media planning, measurement and social data. Marketers that do not have these capabilities in-house should choose a marketing partner with these critical characteristics.

By implementing these steps, you will achieve a cycle of smarter marketing that ensures that you know your customers better, learn faster and create more value for them.

Sarah Snyder is the general manager of advanced solutions at social ad technology and insights provider SocialCode.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.