Forrester confirms ‘the Facebook Factor’ in engaging brand loyalty!

admin | May 8, 2012

It’s no wonder Facebook is going through the roof, in terms of advertiser interest, when studies like The Facebook Factor:
Quantifying The Impact Of A Facebook Fan On Brand Interactions from Forrester deliver confirmations like the following:

  • Facebook fans are much more likely to purchase, consider, and recommend brands. Forrester tested against four brands –
    Best Buy, Coca-Cola, BlackBerry, and Walmart — and found that a Facebook fan has a significantly higher probability of brand interaction. “Smartphone owners who are Facebook fans of BlackBerry, for example, are 5.6 times more likely to have made a purchase from BlackBerry in the past 12 months than non-fans, with everything else held equal. And Facebook fans of Best Buy are about twice as likely to purchase from and recommend Best Buy. In the case of Coca-Cola, even though 71% of online Americans purchase the product,
    Facebook fans have a probability of 95% of doing so.“
  • Facebook “fandom” has the largest impact on purchase.  For Best Buy, being a Facebook fan meant you were 5.3 times more likely to buy than would a non-fan.  And fans were far more likely to recommend the brand, too.
  • The value in your Facebook fan base is in their willingness to recommend. Facebook fans of each brand were much more likely to recommend them than non-fans. BlackBerry owners who were Facebook fans had an 87% probability of recommending BlackBerry to a friend or relative, while a BlackBerry owner who doesn’t engage with the brand on Facebook had a 44% likelihood. And they were three times as likely to recommend BlackBerry as were non-fan smartphone owners.

In other words, marketing via Facebook is incredibly powerful.   It’s why the Lead Generation Machine was created: to let marketers, big and small, leverage social media channels for their extraordinary ability to drive loyalty, conversation and evangelism around their brand and products.

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Facebook outperforms other Web-based advertising.

admin | April 25, 2012

It’s all about knowing your audience, and being able to target strong ties via effective social media marketing tools.  That’s why pundits and observers like Peter Kafka of All Things D can point out that a social media channel like Facebook is showing signs of becoming a better place to spend your ad dollar than a web-based campaign.

An ad on the Web may do a better job of reaching its audience than, say, a magazine ad. But that doesn’t mean it does a good job.

There’s data to back it up, too, not just anecdotal impressions, provided by Neilsen.  The example campaign, aimed strictly at women, only hit the target 25 percent of the time. 47 percent of the time, the ads were displayed to men.

It’s that “carpet bombing the Internet” analogy we’ve used before.  Facebook and other social media marketing channels are refining the way you can identify and speak to your best possible customer, using an API like the Lead Generation Machine to simplify and expedite the process. That ensures your ad spend is spent more effectively than before.

Because otherwise, you might get better results emptying a basket of cash out the window of your office, with your name and contact info jotted on each bill.

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Facebook marketing doubles in one year.

admin | April 6, 2012

For social media marketing users, it’s another bit of evidence that the SMM arena is becoming increasingly complex and crowded, and that tools that streamline and expedite social targeting and mining the social graph are an absolute necessity.

A new study indicates that spending on Facebook marketing doubled in the past year.

On a relative basis, this represents three to five per cent of search spend, indicating social media continues to be a “strong, digital advertising channel”, the authors of the report claim.

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Lead generation through Facebook — five “R”s to remember!

admin | April 2, 2012

A recent study of B2B marketers found that 93% of them are adopting social media as part of their marketing mix.  That’s just one category – all types of businesses are investing in the “big 3” of social media – Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook – and are looking to capture quality leads using these channels.  But what’s the best way to maximize this opportunity?  How do you mine the social graph efficiently and impactfully?  Especially Facebook?

Facebook is cited by many respondents as being the channel where people are most engaged.  If you’re doing social targeting and social media prospecting, you obviously want to reach people where they’re paying the most attention, and where you’re inserting yourself into social conversations.

Moreover, Facebook is also a social media marketing channel where a marketer can truly uncover and target the “strong ties” that are the foundation of brand evangelism and social media lead prospecting.

But to properly leverage Facebook, a marketer has to remember the key points we’ve mentioned before…which conveniently fall into these “Five Rs”…

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Social isn’t viral…unless you’re respectful of your target!

admin | March 29, 2012

This post on AllThingsD by Ben Elowitz of Wetpaint gets it excrutiatingly right: social isn’t automatically viral, and marketers who think so are missing the boat. The net-net has to be about content — if you ain’t got it, and it isn’t worthy, you’re not going to get viral traction.

Mention that to some marketeres and you can see the barriers start to rise. “Sounds like a lot of work,” they say.  So it’s important for them to understand the real impact of social media, on the fact it’s not always a direct response strategy but also a long, gradual play that pays off in a host of ways that go beyond leads and sales.

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Reward your influencers – they’re a precious commodity!

admin | March 23, 2012

More and more marketers are catching on to the fact that key influencers are a precious commodity in social media marketing, particularly those whose strong ties to your brand or to followers help drive the conversation around what you’re bringing to market.

Mark Schaefer, author of “Return on Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing,” pointed that out in an interview on CBS This Morning:

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Targeting strong social ties — the SME advantage!

admin | March 19, 2012

Small to mid-sized marketers, who sometimes are reluctant to make the leap into social media marketing because they aren’t comfortable with the investment and learning curve involved in using traditional social targeting tools, actually have an advantage in targeting and leveraging strong social ties and social networks – an advantage that bigger marketers lack!

That advantage comes from the fact that many SMEs survive and thrive by knowing how to deliver personalized customer service and support.  They already do “social marketing,” except it’s across a counter or a phone line or through an email exchange.

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How “Likes” & strong ties align with purchase loyalty.

admin | March 13, 2012

We’re now seeing powerful examples of how targeting the right social media audience with a relevant message pays off.  Here’s one profound example.

ComScore data indicates that consumers who indicate they “Like” a retailer on Facebook — and the Facebook  friends of these consumers –are more likely to buy from that retailer than consumers who aren’t fans, or friends of fans.

The company studied the buying influence wrought by fans and their friends for Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy. It found that consumers who directly “Like” one of those retailers on Facebook are more likely to buy from that retailer than a consumer who has no affiliation with the retailer on Facebook.

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Why the Lead Generation Machine? To exploit strong ties.

admin | March 10, 2012

Social ties drive commerce in the new, social Web. Period. To succeed in identifying prospects, making sales and creating brand evangelists, you need to first identify those key influencers with strong ties – the connected individuals who can endorse and amplify your brand among the peers in their personal networks.

The Lead Generation Machine was designed from the ground up to do precisely that: let small to mid-sized businesses have access to all the tools they need to reach and activate those key influencers.

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Strong ties, and why they matter to social marketers.

admin | March 8, 2012

In social media marketing, it’s important to understand the difference between “strong ties” and “weak ties,” and how they impact your marketing efforts against a given personal network.

A strong tie is one between people who are very well engaged: think of the people you’ve got on speed dial, who you exchange messages or pleasantries or conversation with on a regular basis.  They might be friends, or family, or simply people who share common interests and are free and open in discussing them.

A weak tie is a person you only contact once in a while: the old friend from high school you exchange Christmas cards with, or the former coworker, or the second cousin in Muncie you keep meaning to visit, or that vendor you’ll get a call from every quarter or so asking for business.  From the standpoint of your own personal network, your “circle of influence,” they’re on the periphery.

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