Shock horror – Facebook ads really do work, possibly

By June 13 2012, 4:53 pm Leave a comment
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First GM pulled back on Facebook advertising. Then the high-profile FB flotation stumbled. The vultures began to circle. But now a new comScore study could herald an about turn. Or, at least, give us food for thought. It shows that fans and friends-of-fans were more likely to buy a product they cherished than not. Which seems to have some blindly obvious circular logic to it! Specifically, the people exposed to one company’s message on FB were almost 40% more likely than a typical user to make a purchase in the following month.

There are holes in the methodology and doubts over impartiality – Facebook co-commissioned it!? The key point to take out of it is not to use the obsessional amassing of fans as your one and only and simplistic metric. A lot of people will manipulate the button anyway to get their freebies – and then ‘unlike’ you in a flash. It’s just the beginning of the engagement process and you’ll need to be a lot cannier now that the novelty days of FB are over.

Here are some of the key findings from comScore, but please do read the whole report to make your own mind up:

  • Brands can maximize the impact of their social marketing programs on Facebook by leveraging a framework that helps them move beyond Fan acquisition to delivering reach, impact, and measurable marketing ROI. Using the Brand Page as a control panel for creating social marketing programs, brands should focus on benchmarking and optimizing on the following dimensions to deliver against their broader marketing objectives.
    • Fan Reach Exposure in the News Feed
    • Engagement – Fans interacting with Brand Page marketing content
    • Amplification – viral delivery of marketing content from Fans to Friends of Fans
  • Most leading brands on Facebook achieve a monthly Amplification Ratio of between 0.5 and 2.0, meaning that they extend the reach of their earned media exposure of Fans to Friends of Fans by 50-200%.
  • Facebook represents a unique marketing channel that enables Paid, Earned and Owned Media to be leveraged to create a virtuous cycle of brand impact.
  • Concentrated social media campaigns, such as those performed during important marketing promotions, can significantly amplify the reach of earned media exposure.
  • Exposure to Facebook Premium Ads also drove statistically significant lifts in both online and in-store purchase incidence for a major retailer over a four-week post-exposure period.www.thisistda.com