How Do Brands Define Success on Facebook?
Posted by Nick O'Neill on October 7th, 2008 12:38 PMYesterday I wrote about how brands can succeed on Facebook. At the time I suggested that success for me personally is having an application within the leaderboard. Commenters immediately suggested that this position was a flawed one and after thinking about it further, I agree. The first step in launching a social media campaign or an individual campaign on Facebook is defining your objectives.
Is Brand Building Important for All?
One of the primary objectives of many branded campaigns on Facebook is to simply build brand awareness. Just this morning I read about the 14 new campaigns launched by ContextOptional over the past two weeks. Yesterday I posted about Buddy Media’s strategy of appvertisements. Mike Lazerow, CEO of Buddy Media, posted a response in the comments which points out the flaw in my thinking:
The applications we build for our clients are marketing programs. The applications built by the top Facebook and MySpace developers are uber-funded entertainment properties that are continually cared for, improved, tweaked and refreshed with new content and features. This takes significant resources and talent.
I agree with Mike that branded applications aren’t the same as products that development companies are building out. This doesn’t mean that branded applications are right for everybody though. Does People magazine really need to build more brand awareness? While readership is going down, I would argue that piling money into Facebook applications would not necessarily increase their avid fan base.
The challenge for the media companies is not how they make consumers more aware of their brand but how to attract the attention of consumers to their content in an attention deprived economy.
How Do You Define Success?
If we are to assume that brand building is not the only thing to be accomplished through Facebook application campaigns, what should brands use when judging success? One commenter yesterday suggested that it’s the combination of strategies (external site, Facebook application, and advertisements) which is most effective.
Another commenter suggested that even low engagement levels with their applications is still successful. This means that different companies have different standards for success. This also means that there should at least be some initial questions to answer for determining success. I’ll start it off with 3 questions to answer when determining success, feel free to add to it below:
- What is your company looking to accomplish from exposure on Facebook? - This could be a increase in traffic to your company’s website or an increase in exposure to your brand.
- What metrics will you use to judge success? - Is “engagement” based on time spent within a branded environment the best way to measure your success? How about the total number of unique visitors? Are pageviews important to you? How about ROI? Is it possible to increase revenue directly from a Facebook application?
- Is this Marketing or Advertising? - Is your company looking to simply promote its brand or provide a valuable experience?
What other questions do you think should be answered? Ultimately I can’t effectively define success for all so I’d like to hear your thoughts on what success on Facbeook is to you.
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5 Responses to “How Do Brands Define Success on Facebook?”
Nick,
These are good questions, and you're right to suggest that brands define their objectives in using Facebook for branding purposes.
That said, I have the sense that a lot of companies are still testing the waters. This doesn't mean that the bar should be set low, but brands can learn a lot simply by taking a few cost-effective steps into social media marketing/advertising/branding. So that's a benefit right there: experience.
There's also the shift in thinking that comes from social media branding: from mass exposure and volume to social graph exposure. Entering the “conversation” only starts when you have something to say that's interesting to end users, and only when you have grasped the importance of listening, and of being an active partner in the conversation. Again, it takes some experience with social media to “get it,” and here again I think brands have a lot to learn and from which to benefit. Another plus to getting your feet wet.
Personally, I think that brands miss the point somewhat if they rely on metrics for proof of campaign success. Yes, marketing is a numbers-driven business. But I don't think social media are entirely a numbers game. We simply have no metrics for brand values like Trust, Attention, Awareness, Influence. All of these accrue to brand equity but are notoriously difficult to extract from user behaviors (e.g. clicks, join, follow, etc).
Lastly, I think there's immense room for creative participation. Instead of a Kraft page, why not a Kraft Cheesy Singles app? A social game around cheesy dating pick up lines, for example. A social media campaign should start with the user, not the brand. Brand managers are used to caretaking their brand image — social media are about talk, not image, less about impressions and more about relationships.
Just my 2 cents!
People magazine is in the business of aggregating audience and selling that audience to advertisers. Why wouldn't they go where their audience hangs out (Facebook and MySpace) and sell that audience to advertisers via their huge ad sales network? They're not there to build a brand. They're there to make money.
So then People magazine should be building applications for the purpose of lasting engagement and not ads?
I see Adrian's point, and I happen to agree that there is immense value in setting aside a budget for experimenting in the space, and making sure you get 5-10 campaigns out of that budget. Try it all, double down on the good experiences.
I don't agree that brands should stop protecting their brand image. It is a form of equity, and a brand that has spent decades building, defining, and protecting it's image won't stop because the social web came along. Savvy brands will evolve and learn how to continuing building their image using the new tools available.
@lazerow - your model is flawed, and i can see you in various comments trying to convince yourself and others of its validity. Brands will achieve the same success with interstitial ads appearing between page/action/movie views of *successful* *popular* apps with *longevity* that embrace and use the *social graph* than they would with harshly branded poorly thought out applications with no longevity or social aspects. Your branded 'apps' do not engage the user, at all! If they did they would have more users once the marketing spigot is cut. So they see 'priceline' one time, and then leave and never return; great. But if I'm a brand like People magazine I want to engage my user more than once for my money. Popular apps can do that for me. Buddy Media's 'apps' can not.
You claim that brands will follow their users to facebook, myspace etc - why wouldnt they follow them to the best apps, the places they hang out already? Why stop short at the platform and then look for help in creating their own 'app' when they can advertise with interstitials on popular apps that engage users and have proven longevity. And why would users seek out your 'commercial' apps? There is too much transparancy in metrics to hide the fact that your apps dont keep users around.
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