There have been many attempts to pin down the value of a Facebook fan/like, Twitter follower, Linkedin connection or similarly engaged person across the social media landscape. Personally, I’ve always been a little dubious of the methodologies employed to reach these conclusions. As a researcher in my past life, I expected better.
Recently, my former colleagues at top brand research consultancies Millward Brown & Dynamic Logic, in partnership with the World Federation of Advertisers, tackled the topic of fan value in a two-phase research project across 24 WFA member brands. Their goal was to understand what marketers wanted out of fans, how fans impacted brand equity and determine what consumers most wanted from brands they interact with on Facebook.
What marketers value from fans
While this answer may be somewhat influenced by the nature of this research (research firm asking questions of brands who value research), most brands place a heavy emphasis on drawing insights from their fans’ social interactions. Driving loyalty through social engagement is also key, as is one of the assumed benefits of that loyalty: recommending the brand to others. For the most part, brands don’t define fan value in terms of short-term impact on sales and less than 50% feel fan value should be measured by future sales. In summary, it appears that brands do grasp that social media interactions are not transactional. Their goal is to maintain a relationship based on empathy and respect, with brands trying to deepen their understanding of the consumer and earn their loyalty, not push them to open their wallet at every opportunity.
While this is an admirable, and correct, approach to social marketing, it does leave brands in a pickle regarding empirical measurement of their efforts attracting and interacting with fans. Only 23% of brands qualified the return on their social investment as “good,” with a full 50% unsure of the result. The folks at Millward Brown have a long history of measuring brand equity, primarily through their BrandZ methodology, which they claim (and my personal experience there more or less confirms) is validated against sales, meaning they the brands they determine have strong brand equity also push more product.
By taking their brand equity measurement methodology and applying that to “fans,” MB has determined that fans outspend non-fans by over 4x, based on their increased brand loyalty. As with any piece of research, it’s worth taking this claim with a grain of salt. That said, it’s pretty clear to this observer that fans are significantly more brand loyal and it’s an easy leap to suggest that loyalty does impact share of wallet.
What fans value from marketers
With marketer motivations and the potential impact of fans on brand loyalty and the bottom line covered, the research shifts to what consumers want in return for clicking the “like” button. Ultimately, no marketer expectations of how fans can deliver value can be met without mapping an engagement strategy to what consumers want.
MB found that there were a few table stakes in fan page content – content every brand must have – and others that fewer brands get right and offer opportunity for marketers to stand out from the pack.
Does it surprise you that contests, offers, new product info, news about the brand and simply not being asleep at the wheel on content updates are viewed by consumers as expected on Facebook? Would an honest assessment of your own Facebook presence reveal that you are delivering in all of these areas?
In our experience at Signal, many brands are starting to see the value in contests, special offers and promotions to both grow their fan base and keep existing fans engaged. We’ve seen huge traction with our Facebook sweepstakes product, which is part of our cross-channel campaign suite.
Conversely, I’ve seen more brands struggle with delivering compelling brand content regularly via their Facebook page. It’s very easy to come across as advertising a product or to mistake a company milestone as news the average consumer would find interesting. The MB research revealed a key insight as to why consumers want unique & exclusive brand content via Facebook – they want their network to view them as brand experts.
What should I do today?
So, what to do with this insight? If you’re not doing these things already, I’d suggest the following tactics that map to MB’s conclusions to help you grow & cultivate your fans.
- Run a Facebook contest: As MB’s research suggests, this is table stakes, but it’s also really effective in growing fans and giving them a reason not to “unlike.” Our cross-channel sweepstakes is the perfect way to get started. Don’t just run a sweepstakes on your Facebook page, but tell your subscribers and fans everywhere about it by promoting it via text message, email or tweet to your brand-engaged consumers in those channels.
- Give them a coupon: A simple execution, but an important and expected one. We can help there too. Link to our web coupons from a Facebook status update – it’s as simple as that.
- Measure the impact of these efforts on your brand: Whether it be with Millward Brown or another strong brand research firm, give one of these guys a call. While useful data is everywhere (Facebook’s own Analytics product is getting much better, for example), understanding the big picture of your brand’s equity among fans/followers/friends is best done with a trained research partner.
Understanding & growing fan value is becoming increasingly demystified. Feel free to reach out to us if you want to talk more about how to apply these insights.
