Are you a naysayer of Facebook marketing? Well listen up. I get your hesitancy. Geez, even big brands like GM have chosen to opt out and crawl back to their safe place, so I won’t blame you if you run. Those who’ve seen the results of successful Facebook marketing know the opportunities are out there. You just have to do it right!
ComScore just released a whitepaper called The Power of The Like 2: How Social Marketing Works. In it, they bring attention to the fact that Facebook Fans and their friends tend to be businesses’ highest-value customers, giving businesses a great opportunity to communicate with these top customers in an ongoing way.
In Power of a Like 2, ComScore re-confirmed that fans and their friends are a brand’s most valuable customers. Here are some examples:
• Best Buy fans spend 131% more in Best Buy stores and online
• Target fans spend 97% more
• Amazon fans visit the site 5 times more often
A few days ago I launched a Kruse Control Inc Facebook Page. I’d been holding off because I felt my audience (car dealers and their staff) was not generally users of Facebook. I decided it was time to jump in, so instead of asking every one of my 1,934 friends to like the page, I’m selecting only those that will find my posts relevant. It matters who your fans are.
Most dealerships focus early Facebook marketing efforts on accumulating fans and aren’t picky about who those fans are. There’s a long-term value associated with being able to continuously communicate with and market to your local customer. However, dealers don’t want to add just any ol’ like. They want likes from their existing customer base and new customers in their primary market area (and their competitors’ PMA). Why? You’re not likely to sell or service a car to someone who’s a few states over.
What steps can you take to get the most out of your Facebook marketing?
- Reach fans and their friends. In March 2012, 15.2% of all U.S. display ads across the web were socially- enabled, up from 8.2% in November 2011. Growing likes is the first step to your success and Facebook ads are instrumental to your strategy.
- Relevance plays a huge roll in engagement. In this next step, dealers who engage more regularly, whether through a comment, like, share, or check-in, have a greater likelihood of being seen on their Fans’ News Feeds.
- Resonance. You must amplify your reach. Your Facebook Fans serve as the conduit to their friends. As they interact with your page’s content, they have the ability to reach dozens of their friends (and those friends’ networks). Many times, you’re able to double the reach of your page posts through Friends of Fans. This is where Sponsored Stories comes in handy. They spotlight a specific post you made and deliver Social proof to your audience.
I have a case study I’d like to share with you. A dealership decides to test the value of Facebook marketing. They run a month-long campaign in May 2012 to promote pricing specials on tires. They use Facebook ads to target Fans and Friends of Fans. Result? They had the biggest month ever selling tires. Here’s the stats on the ad campaign:
- 1,270,202 Impressions
- 291 Clicks
- 0.023% CTR
- $502.34 Spent
The dealer was thrilled. The marketing manager, Josh Friedman, was ecstatic. “It did what good advertising does: it increased awareness in a targeted market, so that when we followed our sales process in the service lane, our customers were receptive. We reached 85,110 Friends of Fans (13 avg frequency of impressions) and we reached 597 out of 1053 Fans (21 avg frequency of impressions). 269 Friends of Fans clicked through; 5 Fans clicked through. Social proof drives sales, no question about it.”
This is the real power of Facebook Fans. It’s the power of the network. In Josh’s case, Social proof drove higher engagement and sales. What can it do for your store?
