The future of Facebook is forensic
Marketers should stop using Facebook as a mass reach tool and start thinking about conversions not conversations argues Jack Smyth.
Forget conversations – the future of Facebook is forensic By now you’re probably sick of the same articles recycling the same Facebook statistics. Over 12 million Australian users, spending on average 8.5 hours every week and so on. We all know Facebook offers massive reach.
But judging by the poorly targeted ads I see in my feed few Australian brands have mastered the massive amounts of data Facebook generates every day.
And when I say massive, I mean it.
“We all know Facebook offers massive reach.”
Really? My anecdotal experience is Facebook has become massively uncool, the domain of baby boomers and … marketers.
Could you be damaging your brand by associating with it?
Hi Bec, thanks for your comment. Facebook still commands the largest number of active users in Australia. Roughly 95% of Australians who use social media are on Facebook, the next biggest is LinkedIn with 24% according to the Sensis 2014 Social Media Report. In terms of cool and uncool your choice of social network will always depend on your audience and if you were skewing younger maybe you would want to look at more “cool” networks like Snapchat. However I don’t think simply being on Facebook would damage a brand – it would depend on how they behaved on it. For example, poorly targeted ads that interrupt your experience on a social network would definitely damage a brand.
Just about everything in this article is wrong.
Tight targeting might deliver greater response rates but, in fact, thats not a very good indicator of effectiveness.
Well said Eaon.
Grab a copy of Byron Sharp’s “How Brands Grow”, those who haven’t read it, and have all your current thinking challenged with facts.
Not a hater, Jack. But sceptical about coffee shop case studies. Can you spell this out with a another category, even if its just hypothetical?
Hi Eaon & John,
Thanks for your comments. I’m familiar with Bryon Sharp’s take on response rates and measuring effectiveness by total response and net profit contribution.
However Facebook data allows you to target non-customers similar to existing customers (total response: they were not likely to purchase anyway) and at a lower CPM than many digital channels (net profit: reducing marketing costs) so I’m at a loss to see why just about everything in this article is wrong.
It’s interesting to note that many of Byron’s examples on this issue are about brands talking to existing customers rather than converting new customers: http://www.byronsharp.com/blog.....756-6.html).
Hi me,
No problem. For a car brand you could go through your database and match it with Facebook data to build a customer profile for each model. You can then use that profile to find similar accounts on Facebook and target them with the specific model.
Or if you were trying to build loyalty you could look through that database and target your customers by their profession with a relevant care pack.
good on you for sticking your neck out with a different view Jack – and an interesting one.