Engaging consumers with Facebook
How can you turn 1 million into 32 million? How can 6 plus 17 equal 87? No, we’re not bad at maths; we’re just demonstrating the magic multiplier effect of brilliant content on your brand’s Facebook page, then integrating that with a TV campaign.
One of the great truths of marketing, the one we learn at marketing pre-school, is that there’s no better advertisement than word of mouth. Its power is greater than PR, advertising and direct mail – and all this is offered at the mere touch of a Like button.
But does the liking, sharing and commenting translate to cold hard sales? What can you do measure, steer and ultimately boost the efficiency of using Facebook in your online media campaign, and how will it sit with your offline efforts?
GfK’s recent NAKED-Digital Laid Bare event sought input from the Facebook team to find out.
Reaching across the ages
Facebook has undergone something of a change in the last few years. Far from being just the social media of the youthful masses, Facebook now boasts a quarter of its 30 million users in the UK in the 50-64 demographic, and people use it not only to connect with their friends and family, but also to connect with brands. This means that your Facebook marketing strategy has to be seamlessly integrated into your online – and offline – strategy.
Facebook’s equivalent of word-of-mouth is viral reach. Organic reach can get your message to a certain number of consumers on Facebook and paid reach can boost that, but then there is the holy grail of viral; the equivalent of word of mouth on Facebook.
Viral reach knows no bounds, and this is where our first example of could-try-harder maths comes in: the organic reach of Team GB’s Facebook page during London 2012, full of engaging content and photos of the sporting stars was 1 million. The viral reach was around 32 million.
Granted, the Olympics does present a rather special circumstance and most marketers could look forward to a significant pay rise if their campaign were as successful, but it does demonstrate the power, and necessity, of appealing content.
Fans do not necessarily mean traffic
So far so good. Your Facebook page has been liked and shared and boasts lots of fans…surely you can expect them to keep coming back to you and buying your brand? Not always, and fans do not always equal traffic.
Ben and Jerry’s have a large fan base but return visits are lower than some other brands. L’Oreal on the other hand has a low fan-base but a high level of engagement. This shouts loud and clear that some content works better than others.
50 million Likes, but what does it mean?
Along the path to honing your content lies the need to judge its resonance – whether you’re altering your consumers’ perception of your brand and whether your brand site is effectively pulling visitors through to Facebook and vice versa. And finally – and most importantly – are your likers, sharers and commenters actually spending more with you?
The statistic in the title is Coke’s and it raises the question; do fans checkout and buy your product? The good news is that people reached via Facebook brand pages are more likely to purchase and fans are more likely to checkout, at least in the tech and FMCG sectors, but we recognise that there is much work to be done in this field.
Marketers can only invest so much in a channel before checking its effectiveness and, ultimately, its value. Facebook’s new conversion tracking ad tool is one example of responding to this need.
Facebook and TV – natural partners
In terms of reaching the most people in the shortest time, Facebook and TV are unsurpassed. But successful and sustainable campaigns will need equally sustainable measurement, and this is where GfK have been concentrating efforts.
A series of recent studies by GfK sought to gauge the ROI of a Facebook advert, compare it to the ROI for a TV ad and then measure how a combination of the two can affect investment expectations, budget allocation and the uplift one can achieve.
As you’d expect, the effectiveness of a Facebook campaign increases with the frequency of contact, and the more contacts you can generate the better. Facebook paid media complements TV well, if the channels are leveraged together and messages are aligned. You may then find yourself in the happy position of gaining not only an increase in net reach but also a significant proportion of reach exclusive to Facebook alone.
Aligning your messages across media can boost your bottom line
This is the second incidence of questionable maths: our study in Germany showed the sales uplift effect of TV campaigns was 12 % while Facebook campaigns delivered 7%. Thus, the combined uplift effect was expected to be around 20% – but actually was more in the region of 87% when there had been synergy in messaging across each media, released in the same week.
Engage, interact and understand
So, in short: content is king, look beyond the fan counts alone and engage, interact and let your fans interact with each other. If these three elements come together, you can set the sights of your viral reach high.
Business success online is no different to other forms of offline marketing and is driven by different forms of reach, but it’s true to say that Facebook and TV are happy partners and, when leveraged together, can offer both incremental and exclusive reach.
While there is still work to be done in the measurement of fans’ loyalty and engagement, we can track the path of one person’s progress to purchase and this will prove be the key to building a satisfying consumer journey with an equally satisfying ROI.