Many marketers are already on Facebook, even as they are still figuring out the best way to use the site to meet their specific needs.
According to Burson-Marsteller’s “Global Social Media Check-Up 2011,” 61% of Fortune Global 100 companies are using Facebook fan pages in 2011, up from 54% in 2010. In the US this percentage is even higher, with 72% of Fortune 100 companies on Facebook in 2011. [Note: At publication date for this report, Facebook and Burson-Marsteller admitted that they had participated in an anti-Google PR campaign.]
The number of companies and marketers on Facebook is growing, and will continue to grow as they see success using the site. Hubspot’s “The 2011 State of Inbound Marketing” report found that 44% of companies in North America see Facebook as critical or important, up from 24% in 2009. This ties the site with YouTube and trails only company blogs.
As Facebook increases in importance for marketers, it has become the de facto place for businesses to do social media marketing. Shiv Singh, head of digital at PepsiCo Americas Beverages, compared Facebook to Wal-Mart in an interview with eMarketer on March 3, 2011.
“In many ways, Facebook is the Wal-Mart of the digital space for us,” Singh said. “[On Facebook] we find a deep, meaningful and easy way to learn from our consumers, co-create with them, market to them and create meaningful engagement experiences with them for the long term.”
Facebook Page or Microsite?
Coca-Cola’s vitaminwater, after hosting several successful Facebook campaigns, shut down its branded website in December 2010 and began pointing visitors to itsFacebook page. Other brands, such as Procter & Gamble’s Cover Girl and Mars Inc.’s Dove chocolates, promote their Facebook URL instead of their web URL in print ads. These moves are controversial, but are they right for some brands? Here are some things to consider:
Handing over control of online marketing to Facebook is not a decision to be made lightly. While Facebook’s large audience and extensive social media marketing toolset make it an appealing partner, brands must also consider who owns the data and the relationship with the consumer—the brand or Facebook?—and what to do if the brand’s goals and Facebook’s goals don’t mesh.
The most popular activities of companies on Facebook are posting videos and asking for comments or stories from fans, according to the November 2010 WONGDOODY (now Wong, Doody, Crandall, Wiener) report, “Facebook Global Best Practices.” In that study, 88% of respondents said they posted video content, 82% solicited fan stories or comments, 79% had their wall open for fan comments and 66% actively replied to fan posts and comments.
The WONGDOODY survey also provided a set of benchmarks for marketers: In its study of 84 branded Facebook pages, there was an average of 24 corporate posts per month, or almost one per weekday, and an average of 1,456 “likes” for each post.
Eight Criteria for Facebook Success
Altimeter Group, in its white paper “The 8 Success Criteria for Facebook Page Marketing,” recommends that brands focus on the following key strategies:
1. Set community expectations
2. Provide cohesive branding
3. Be up to date
4. Live authenticity
5. Participate in dialogue
6. Enable peer-to-peer interactions
7. Foster advocacy
8. Solicit a call to action
In its analysis of 30 brands on Facebook, Altimeter found that most were successful at branding and at making sure their pages were up to date. However, brands were less adept at setting expectations, creating peer-to-peer interactions, developing advocacy and generating calls to action.
Altimeter suggests that brands benchmark their progress in these eight areas on a quarterly basis.
“Likes” and Other Metrics for Success
Ever since Facebook began its push to popularize the “like” button in April 2010, marketers have been on a quest to build that magical number. “Likes” are the most common way brands measure the success of Facebook pages, and companies have used a variety of tactics to increase their count. They can design their Facebook pages to highlight the “like” button, provide exclusive content and host campaigns with coupons or offers for people who “like” the pages.
The button can also be deployed across the web, enabling consumers to like everything from a news article to a blog post to a pair of jeans on an ecommerce website.
The number of “likes” is only a superficial count, but it is also one of the most visible and comparable metrics marketers can look to.
According to Burson-Marsteller, Fortune 100 companies had a global average of 87,979 “likes” per Facebook page in 2011, up 115% from 40,884 in 2010. The Asia-Pacific region saw the most growth, 406%, while the US average nearly doubled.
European companies did not see a noticeable increase, but the study is unclear on why that was.
Other Metrics
While marketers generally agree that “likes” is not a perfect metric, it has been difficult to come up with another standard measurement of success for Facebook pages. Some companies have been working to link their Facebook presence back to business results, sales leads and new customers. In Hubspot’s “State of Inbound Marketing” report, 67% of business-to-consumer (B2C) companies and 41% of business-to-business (B2B) companies said they had acquired customers via Facebook.
Other ways companies can measure the success of social media include tracking the redemption of coupons offered via the Facebook page, gaining new email addresses and making sales. There has been a significant increase in businesses using these sorts of conversion metrics as measures of success.
In the Bazaarvoice and CMO Club study “CMOs on Social Marketing Plans for 2011,” site traffic was the top metric used by CMOs worldwide to measure the value of social media marketing activities, at 68% of respondents. However, conversion ranked a close second, at 65.7%, nearly double the percentage of respondents as in 2010.
Other top metrics in the Bazaarvoice/CMO Club survey were the number of fans, the number of positive customer mentions and the number of contributors. These softer metrics are also important, as they give a sense of ongoing involvement beyond the initial “like.”
With so many businesses actively involved in Facebook marketing, it is critical to have a solid plan not only for acquiring a fanbase, but for keeping fans engaged. Understanding how consumers view brands on Facebook and what motivates them to continue to interact is important for success.
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