Beyond the “Like:” A Look at Facebook

The goal of marketing is to influence customers to purchase a product. Facebook has a tremendously high impact potential for reaching consumers online. With its treasure trove of user data, Facebook has become a valuable tool for studying consumer behavior and conducting market research.

Today, it is extremely important that companies not only focus on getting “likes,” but also focus on how they can integrate Facebook into their overall advertising strategy. Companies who have embraced Facebook as a serious vehicle to reach customers are seeing that commitment translate into sky-rocketing sales.

Not long ago, Old Spice was an old brand in an oversaturated market, and they needed to come up with an idea that would translate their brand’s messages across as many mediums as possible. They put together a team that consisted of social media strategists, technical web development people, a producer and social listeners. Together this team used real-time analytics to scan the internet in order to find influencers. That groundwork helped them to tailor their message by listening directly to consumers, and make sure that their message was current with trends those users followed.

The result of the integrated campaign combining Facebook, YouTube, television and radio resulted in a 107% sales increase the first month and 55% increase in sales the subsequent months. Those numbers were cited in an article at BrandWeek. Adweek quotes Visible Measures’ Matt Cutler saying that the total web views for all Old Spice brand videos have reached 110 million, “surpassing the reach of traditional broadcast.”

How can your company leverage that kind of data? First we must look at why it works so well.

Why are companies that embrace Facebook so successful?

Part of the reason companies are getting such an incredible impact with Facebook is because the advertising firms who create the message gave thought about amplification of the message as part of their overall creative strategy. Amplification is a ratio that identifies maximum reach potential. It is calculated by measuring specific audiences across a multitude of mediums such as television, radio, outdoor advertising, direct marketing, sales, branding and digital marketing.

Unlike a traditional digital-only marketing agency, an integrated agency like Stream Companies is uniquely placed in this space, as they have a diverse team of multi-disciplinary marketing professionals that can develop the most effective message for your audience, which can then be amplified across the full spectrum of marketing tools.

So how can companies use Facebook beyond the “like?”

Creating buzz, Social Monitoring & Listening: Creating “buzz” about a company goes hand-in-hand with branding and leveraging a positive corporate culture. An example reported by McKinsey Consulting is Ford Motor Company. “Ford Motor Company created an integrated marketing campaign over a period of eighteen months before they reentered the US sub-compact car market with its Fiesta model. According to McKinsey Consulting Co., “it began a broad marketing campaign called the Fiesta Movement. A major element involved giving 100 social-media influencers a European model of the car, having them complete ‘missions,’ and asking them to document their experiences on various social channels. Videos related to the Fiesta campaign generated 6.5 million views on YouTube, and Ford received 50,000 requests for information about the vehicle, primarily from non-Ford drivers. When it finally became available to the public, in late 2010, some 10,000 cars sold in the first six days.”

Successful companies understand that one of the most important parts of running a company involve listening to your customers and providing them with the services that they want/ need. Services like HootSuite and SproutSocial provide social monitoring software so that companies can find their customers online, find out information about their customers and utilize this information to create profiles on their customers. These customer profiles allow them to create an ad message which directly speaks to this audience.

Learning from Customers and Responses: Best Buy was one of the first companies to align their customer service department with their Facebook presence. Gina Debogovich (Director and Social Media Leader) and Elizabeth Sevcik (ECC Social Media Supervisor) from Best Buy spoke about the three core parts of their social customer service program. Their overall strategy was to create a highly trained social customer care team who responds to customer service issues directly in Facebook and Twitter. All 180,000 retail and corporate employees are also encouraged to train, take part and engage customers on their social pages. They also utilized brand advocates who are customers who want to help share their expertise in a given niche- all of which resulted in an increase of sales, and supported their branding and corporate culture.

Targeting customers: Companies are now investing digital marketing dollars into creating virtual sales teams which exist on multiple platforms such as Facebook and mobile. Neiman Marcus has created location-specific in-store apps which connects customers to the sales team and also has a presence on Facebook. The impact of the direct interactions a company can have with their customer base not only leads to increased sales but also spread word-of-mouth marketing about a specific brand or product.

Amplification: Today’s marketing message is all about amplification. What is the largest potential reach a message can have? How will that message resonate with today’s savvy consumers? By measuring the degree to which a message can reach as many potential targeted consumers as possible, companies are able to tailor the message to fit the audience, and predict ahead of time what potential users will embrace, spread, share and interact with, and can even be market tested before launch.

Market Research: Companies who are looking for a specific group of people to quickly conduct market research can now do so using Facebook. Companies like Survey Monkey and PaidSurveys have now created Facebook applications which utilize the demographic profiling information provided by Facebook to select a group of individuals and to conduct market research on Facebook. The ability to reach a specific target audience basically overnight in order to test different campaigns and messages ahead of time has been extremely valuable insight to many corporations such as Sam Adams and Frito-Lay North America who have both utilized Facebook to conduct market research.

Lead Consumers : The use of social media and Facebook can assist companies to lead consumers to make changes, to buy and promote certain products, to be lead down a specific sales funnel that the company would like them to do. For example, a tired company can breathe new life into their brand by embracing Facebook to support their message. Something that was once labeled as “old hat” can turn overnight “vintage.” Suddenly making an underperforming line into a product people embrace, share and use with the right media campaign, timing and message. More corporations are utilizing this to breathe new life into their companies.

Converting Knowledge Gained to Actionable Marketing Methods: All of this leads corporations to then use the information gleamed to create actionable marketing methods. By providing lead forms online, and utilizing real-time Facebook monitoring software to connect sales teams with their customers, a company can bring traffic through to their site through specific sales funnels. This is a main component of how companies are converting Facebook insights into sales. The better companies are at utilizing Facebook, the more its impact will impact their overall sales.

Companies who are seeing a high ROI from their Facebook presences are not only using Facebook as part of their overall advertising strategy, they are also incorporating their marketing departments online including Sales, Human Resources, Corporate Culture Development, Branding, Marketing, Creative Strategy, Customer Service, PR/ media and more to engage consumers and channel awareness into sales. Not every company has the time and the wherewithal to put such a diverse team together. Engaging an audience through social media is a strategy that must be fully-formed and constantly maintained. This is where an ad agency such as Stream Companies can step in.

To find out more about how your company can become more involved in Facebook, contact Stream Companies.