Comments on: The Power of Facebook Likes?

By: ricardo hocine

ricardo hocine — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 20:39:00 +0000

kakà ♥

By: Simon Thomas

Simon Thomas — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 14:14:00 +0000

In reply to Marie Page.

I look forward to seeing that Marie.

By: Marie Page

Marie Page — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 10:54:00 +0000

In reply to Simon Thomas.

Re direct sales from Facebook – I’m convinced that for us Facebook supports plenty of sales beyond the data picked up by Google Analytics. Facebook is a PR tool in this sense and as such is always going to be challenging to directly measure. When I’ve trialed measuring via customer survey (questions like “To what degree does our Facebook page influence your purchase?”) it’s no surprise that customers deny any influence at all. We know from neuromarketing research that we are rarely as aware of the impact of marketing messages as we think (see Martin Lindstrom’s Buy-Ology for more on that).

I’m very much about focussing on the more meaningful numbers and it’s good to see some of the research going that way too. Sadly a recent webinar I attended that Facebook put on was all about increasing fan numbers and very little on Engagement rates (but hey what do I expect? That’s what justifies all that advertising).

I’m currently working on a research project looking at what TYPE of content drives engagement. I’m focussing on small brands (partly because that’s where I work and because I think our behaviour as fans changes depending on whether we are looking at big brand pages or small brand pages – I might like a big brand page for the kudos or info it brings to my wall, but I’d rarely comment on its content or liking individual posts).

Will write up the results in future posts here I’m sure.

By: Simon Thomas

Simon Thomas — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 10:34:00 +0000

Thanks Marie. I too am able to track direct sales from Facebook on GA and it works well, with conversion rates double that for email (that is, a clean database of regular customers). The Twitter conversion rate is even higher (though the quantity lower). With only 1/3 of sales made online, it’s reasonable to assume the FB effect is even higher.

I’ve had varied results from FB advertising, some campaigns not working at all and some quite successful, with sponsored stories working well to drive likes on the brand page.

The comscore report does describe an uplift in sales from those segments that include FB likers and friends, as opposed to the non-FB segment, in the period following exposure to ads. I’d like to see that tracked over time to see if the results are consistent but it might be reasonable to infer a cause and effect there.

It’s good to see you focusing on the smaller, more meaningful numbers, rather than total likes. I’m always wary of the big numbers.

By: Marie Page

Marie Page — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 08:38:00 +0000

Simon
They are good questions and unfortunately none that I can answer with any authority as I’ve merely reported on the research rather than carried it out myself. The report used data and analysis from comScore Social Essentials™, comScore AdEffx™ as well as Facebook Insights. I’m assuming that one of the comScore platforms was able to figure out who of the brand’s many audiences had gone onto buy.

And yes, we would expect a fan to be more likely to buy. The academic literature backs this up. A couple of examples: Woodcock et al (2011) covered multiple bodies of research showing relationships between engagement and value with committed consumers providing 5-8 times the value of an average consumer.

Kim et al (2008) found that online community commitment is a driver for brand commitment demonstrating that such consumers possess stronger brand commitment than those who are not community members.

I know from my own Sponsored Stories ads that ads shown to Friends of Fans (with the implicit endorsement that “XXX likes this”) are hugely more effective in conversion (to Facebook “actions”). What I’m unable to do, even as an ecommerce vendor, is then continue to monitor the customer journey from initial like through to purchase on another platform. Whilst digital marketing is so measurable in so many ways, Facebook presents a big challenge for small companies with limited budget and resources. For me I’m content with the sales we can directly attribute to Facebook (i.e. Google Analytics data showing a sale directly from a Facebook link) and the engagement levels we enjoy on the platform. Such engagement on a platform of the customer’s choosing has to be a good thing for the brand.

By: Simon Thomas

Simon Thomas — Sat, 07 Jul 2012 11:19:00 +0000

Having now read the report, I can see that the methodology is pretty rigorous, although there’s quite a lot of inference involved (not least that an impression appearing in a newsfeed is actually seen by that person). The report does address the question of correlation or causality and states that the research doesn’t answer it. It would be interesting to see if the same test applied six times yielded the same results every time.

By: Simon Thomas

Simon Thomas — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 11:34:00 +0000

This is interesting. I’m always intrigued by whether data tells us about a cause or just a correlation. You say that the research doesn’t categorically prove a link, that is people are not necessarily buying more BECAUSE they are friends of fans or have been potentially exposed to the message. Could it be a demographic thing? They are more likely to buy because they are demographically close to their FB fan friends and therefore have a likelihood to behave the same way? You’d expect fans to be more likely to buy, which is why they’re fans in the first place. Was the research able to say that the buyers had actually been exposed to the FB messages (with Edgerank that’s now less likely)?