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2025 Social Media Analytics Playbook — Track Revenue, Not Likes

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24 Jul 2025, 00:00 Z

TL;DR Standardise UTMs across channels, wire GA4 events to Looker Studio and monitor ROAS/CPL/CAC inside a live dashboard that updates every time your content converts.

1 UTM parameter schema by platform

Platformutm_sourceutm_mediumutm_campaignutm_content
Instagraminstagramsocial{{campaign}}{{post_id}}
TikToktiktoksocial{{campaign}}{{video_id}}
YouTubeyoutubesocial{{campaign}}{{short_id}}
LinkedInlinkedinsocial{{campaign}}{{post_id}}
X (Twitter)xsocial{{campaign}}{{tweet_id}}

Use utm_term for paid keywords. Use utm_id as a stable campaign ID you define (recognized by GA4 for campaign mapping); don’t rely on platform auto-tagging IDs like gclid/fbclid to replace UTMs.

2 GA4 and Looker Studio setup

2.1 GA4 events

  1. Enable Enhanced Measurement for scroll, outbound and site search.
  2. Create custom events:
    • dm_start triggered by click on DM link.
    • dm_click (or similar) for outbound DM link clicks.
    • Avoid emitting “assisted purchase” as a GA4 event — assisted revenue should be modeled in reporting, not captured as a site event.
  3. Mark applicable on-site actions (e.g., dm_click) as Conversions.

2.2 Looker Studio dashboard

  1. Connect GA4 property as data source.
  2. Add charts:
    • Retention cohort table using first_user_source.
    • DM conversion funnel with dm_start → dm_complete.
    • Assisted revenue bar using a Looker Studio/BigQuery model that applies your attribution window (e.g., 7 days) to social touchpoints.
  3. Apply filter control for source / medium to drill down by platform.

3 ROI formulas and benchmarks

3.1 Formulas

\[ ROAS = \frac{\text{Revenue}}{\text{Ad Spend}} \]

\[ CPL = \frac{\text{Total Spend}}{\text{Leads}} \]

\[ CAC = \frac{\text{Total Spend}}{\text{New Customers}} \]

3.2 Benchmarks (how to set them)

  • Start with your trailing 90-day averages for ROAS, CPL and CAC.
  • Define “maintain”, “improve” and “stretch” bands relative to those baselines.
  • Update targets quarterly as campaigns, seasonality and pricing change.
  • When benchmarking externally, favour first-party partner data or paid research; public blog round-ups often lag reality.

4 Build a real-time content performance dashboard

  1. Data ingestion
    • Send UTM-tagged link clicks to Google Sheets via Zapier or n8n.
    • Enable the GA4 → BigQuery export link (daily + intraday export for standard; streaming for 360).
  2. Model layer
    • Join Sheets UTM logs with BigQuery events/sessions on utm_source and utm_campaign.
    • Calculate ROAS, CPL and CAC using the formulas above.
  3. Visualization
    • Connect Looker Studio to the model.
    • Create scorecards for ROAS/CPL/CAC and a table showing content pieces ranked by assisted revenue.
  4. Automation
    • Refresh data every 15 minutes for near real-time reporting.
    • Email a PDF snapshot to stakeholders every Monday.

5 Call-to-action

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References

Last updated 24 Jul 2025. Clarified GA4/UTM mechanics; added references.