Many organizations waste their time with Facebook. Only a small fraction of any company’s customers “Like” their page in Facebook.
You can’t read the press these days without an article telling how fantastic Facebook is. Indeed with 900 million members, it’s very much comparable to being one of the world’s largest countries. Facebook has milked its IPO to full effect. It’s as if the world is infected with a “Facebook fever” which makes companies forget to make the necessary investments on their website and conduct real and vital communication with their audience by email and newsletter.
It’s important to look beyond the hype and investigate whether Facebook can really help your business.
Does Facebook translate into business value?
Companies have been in a race to get Likes on their Facebook pages. Facebook has upped the stakes by adding a new measure of People Talking About This, as if to provide a real-time finger on the pulse of what’s hot.
But Facebook has not necessarily translated into business value for companies. Just look at General Motors which recently cancelled their $10 million Facebook advertising campaign. Sure, we can snicker about the old American car company that is hopelessly out of date, but nevertheless, $10 million should be enough to hire the best social media agency. Their 380,000 Likes on GM’s page did not translate into more cars sold…and there is a question of whether their efforts to engage their customers worked. If General Motors can’t get it to work in spite of all they spend, who else can?
Take a look at the mobile telecom industry, another industry that spends billions of dollars in marketing and advertising. For these companies and all their teams and agencies, they can’t get more than 2% of their subscriber base to Like them in Facebook. Such small results hardly seem worth the effort.
This is not to say that companies should not have a Facebook presence. Indeed, we have seen solid evidence from around the world that social media can help reduce support costs. That is user-driven support on companies’ websites, Facebook, Twitter, and other user-driven tools. However I have yet to see Facebook as a solid driver for leads and sales.
I suspect that there is a drive for Likes because it’s measureable. More of some number seems like a good thing. But measurable does not equate to meaningful. A company could slash prices to get more subscribers, but it’s not the number of customers that matters, but how much they spend and how well they are retained.
Put Facebook into perspective with other marketing channels
At a deeper level, I sense desperation among many companies. Profits are squeezed, and the long term outlook is not positive. So getting more Likes seems like something a marketing director can influence in an environment with larger forces of his control.
I suggest that companies take a hard look at their marketing investments, and put Facebook into perspective with other marketing channels. The attention Facebook receives is over the level of any other media, but its results underperform other channels.
Consider the fact that Facebook shows any company’s posts to just 16% of the community that Likes a page. This is part of Facebook’s algorithm to show posts only to a subset of the community. The ability to serve updates to the entire community that Likes a particular company’s page must be purchased through Facebook’s “Reach Generator”. In practice this means that just .0032 of given customer base can be reached via Facebook. On top of that, unless companies undertake the task to identify the people who Like their page (which can be a difficult task for technical and legal reasons), they may engaging with people who are not even their customers.
I think that companies should invest their limited marketing budget in proven channels such as email, search and newsletters. In fact, email is the best converting channel of all, and only a handful of companies are taking advantage of it. I suspect this is because marketers think email isn’t sexy.
I see a value to companies developing their own content and improving their websites to show that content, as well as making that content findable and shareable. Next I suggest that companies developing meaningful, authentic messages and deliver them to customers in a personalized way.
Companies have a lot of traffic on their website that they don’t monetize. Potential customers are searching the web for information related to your products and services. Companies can take better advantage of this on their website and with email. Furthermore, companies still have a lot of knowledge within their own business intelligence systems that they fail to action for a variety of reasons. I suggest they pick these low-hanging fruits before making a campaign to get more Likes in Facebook.
Learn more
More on the results of Facebook marketing is covered in this excellent article by Andreas Ramos: Facebook Fan Pages: What Changed? What Does This Mean. Roslyn has also previously written on digital marketing on these pages with a posting on avoiding the top 10 errors in email newsletters
You can meet Roslyn at the Aarhus 12 conference for web & intranet professionals in November. Roslyn will be speaking on the digital marketing conference track.
If you are interested in meeting with other social media professionals, then you should join our European Social Media Experts Group.
Ive been saying this for a while, not as succinctly mind. But I certainly agree that FB users press the like button for various subjective reasons. Not necessarily liking for the reason the marketer would “like.” I think a lot more could be made from Pinterest as a platform to drive the discussion about products abnd services.
PS I wish there was a “Dislike” button on FB though.
While I agree that there’s little point in just getting “Likes”, that’s not the only way to use Facebook. What’s more, there’s some pretty impressive evidence of how Facebook adds brand value in this Forrester report: http://forrester.typepad.com/groundswell/2012/04/proof-that-facebook-fans-are-worth-more-to-brands.html
There are also significant differences between email and Facebook: how these are consumed and who uses them. I think this is much more about defining sound objectives in the first place and finding the right medium for your market.
In my experience the real issue with a lack of evidence about leads and sales generation is that community managers are unwilling to measure ROI on social campaigns. I think they’re scared that if the campaign is a failure, everyone blames the medium rather than the substance of the campaign. Which is a bit like saying that billboards are at fault if GM don’t sell more cars. Except of course that you can’t measure how many people saw the billboard, how many of them are of driving age and how many of those are interested in cars. All of which you can do on Facebook.
It’s interesting to hear different people’s rationals for why or why not to buy into Facebook .. I’m thinking that, if the hype helps you benefit from owning the stock, short or long term, when why not go for it
“I suspect that there is a drive for Likes because it’s measureable. More of some number seems like a good thing. But measurable does not equate to meaningful.”
Very well stated. The strive for likes is driven entirely due to the fact it’s a tangible measurement. However, the impact and significance of a like or friend is murky at best. I’ve seen several self-serving definitions and justifications for spending money on facebook branding, development and advertising but not a single one is consistent. Most of it sounds like voodoo economics or fuzzy math.
Thank you for this well written piece.