Who loves you, really? – DIRECT Magazine

Facebook friends, casual acquaintances, people you meet in the street; they may all be potential buyers of your product or service, but for real value customers you can’t beat Fans. Converting one-off buyers into faithful, evangelizing Fans is the goal of every marketer, or should be. But relying on social media to build your brand is tricky and expensive. Malcolm Auld continues his examination of what makes a Fan’s heart beat faster.

Think about this: a researcher asks a customer who has clicked on a Facebook Like button if they are likely to buy the brand they have publically indicated they Like. What person will answer the question with “no, I’m not likely to buy the brand” given they have publically indicated they like it?

A report by Boston-based Chadwick Martin Bailey (CMB), says that 60% of Facebook fans and 79% of Twitter followers are more likely to recommend those brands since becoming a fan or follower. And 51% of Facebook fans and 67% of Twitter followers are more likely to buy the brands they follow or are a fan of. Even if most were customers before becoming fans or followers.

When CMB asked the questions, ‘What are the primary reasons you became a Facebook fan [of brand X]?’ and ‘What are the primary reasons you became a Twitter follower?’ the answers had more to do with the customer and less to do with the brand. In the published research charts, nobody answered because they loved the brand. The most popular answers were:

• To receive discounts and promotions • I am a customer of the brand

Research by eMarketer had similar results, when US Twitterers were asked their motivation for following a company or brand:

• To get updates • To stay informed • To receive discounts and promotions

These are the same reasons most people subscribe to email newsletters. The research would have provided more valuable insights if the question had been ‘what brands have you given up as a result of becoming a fan of brand X?’

When eMarketer asked frequent users of social media the sources of information they trust this is what they said:

In terms of sources they trust completely:

• 26% said blog posts by people you know

• 23% said posts by friends in Facebook

• 12% said friends’ Twitter stream

• 11% said blog post by a brand or company

• 9% said post by a brand, company or product they follow on Facebook

• 8% said fellow community member comments

• 8% said brand, product or company comments in online community

• 6% said brand, product or company Twitter stream

• 6% said blog post by independent bloggers

• 5% said independent bloggers’ Twitter stream

These are not exciting numbers for marketers. If customers have so little trust in people they know and even less in brands or companies, how hard will it be to get an ROI on an investment in social media? Particularly, when the CBM research also revealed that 75% of women and 68% of men are fans of fewer than five brands on Facebook.

You want to be a super star?

How do you become one of the preferred five brands when you are not a global brand with big dollars to spend? The Top 25 Facebook fan sites in the world, based on the number of people who have said they Like the site, are online gaming, dead and live musicians/celebrities, movies and global brands.

And brands are spending a small fortune making their Facebook sites perform. The investments in these sites completely debunk the digi-myth that social media is a cheap way to engage with your audience.

Yet, Josh Mendelsohn, a VP at CMB still says, “While social media is not the silver bullet that some pundits claim it to be, it is an extremely important and relatively low cost touch point that has a direct impact on sales and positive word of mouth. Companies not actively engaging are missing a huge opportunity and are saying something to consumers – intentionally or unintentionally- about how willing they are to engage on consumers’ terms.”

The question has to be asked, relatively low cost compared to what? It’s certainly low-cost for the fan, they just click once. Where is the evidence that being a fan has direct impact to sales? The research indicated that most of the fans are already customers so they don’t necessarily deliver incremental spending.

The popular Old Spice campaign has won awards around the world, but is definitely not cheap to produce. The team needed to monitor the social media comments 24/7 and then continue to produce the video clips consists of more than a couple of students and a hand-held camera. The funding for the campaign is coming from the traditional media budget, but it relies on the target market watching the executions online on a regular basis.

When I ask my marketing audiences, who have seen the campaign, the show of hands is predominantly women. I’m not sure if they represent the target market – though they do like looking at the videos. And if you read the article in Brandweek, you will learn that sales of some lines of Old Spice are down, despite the popularity of the online ‘advertainment’.

The lights are on but…

Digital download volumes of music have stalled and, according to some artists, YouTube views don’t necessarily translate into sales, which is creating a dilemma for those trying to establish themselves on the cheap, so to speak.

As regular readers of this august publication may recall, I interviewed the Meaghan Burdick, Director of Direct Marketing for the campaign to elect Barack Obama. This was one of the first digital-campaigns to use social media. Twitter hadn’t been invented, but they used Facebook and their own website-based community as part of the campaign. The fundraising campaign raised about $750 million. But while social media, particularly the website tools to create your own www.myobama.com microsite, were very useful in filtering and acquiring supporters, the funds were not raised via social media channels. They were raised using direct mail, telemarketing, email and events.

Something else the eMarketer and CMB research revealed is that most of the ‘engagement’ is about the customer, not the brand. The main reason people are clicking on Like buttons has to do with what they can get out of it; how it can improve their personal brand among their connections.

This is not new behaviour – it’s been around for decades and summed up in the following acronym: WIIFM – What’s In It For Me?

The punters care about themselves first and about the brands last. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, one of the most popular theories of human behaviour, explains why. The middle (third) level of his Hierachy is Love and Belongingness – the need to feel loved, or a sense of belonging and acceptance, whether it be by family, friends, colleagues, sport or social groups, religious groups, etc.

Our innate desire to be wanted also goes a long way to explain the madness of crowds and how individuals will follow the flock before questioning why they follow, simply because they fear being left out.

What’s in it for you?

So, while it’s relatively easy to build the number of connections you have online, the value of these connections has to be put into perspective. Friending is the new verb to describe the act of clicking on a link to connect another person to your list of connections on a particular social network. But according to one marketer, “Friending people has become such an automatic, non-conscious, ritual that its value may be close to zero”. And so it is with Brand Fans.

Let’s face it, very few people can write in an engaging, entertaining or informative way that keeps readers interest. Amazing new things don’t happen daily that require commentary, which is why so much of what is published on social sites is simply digital chewing gum for the brain. To demonstrate this during one of my presentations, I did a ‘live cross’ to the Tweets of senior marketers. Suffice to say we learned little about marketing or business and much about the personal minutia of their lives. Probably why it’s known as a Twitter stream…

When you think about it, how can you follow over 3,000 Twits? I struggle to follow three. Has the 60-hour day been invented? In the business networks, such as Linkedin, people are confusing connections with competence. They believe the more people they connect to, the better they are. In most cases though, noise does not mean productivity.

I use Linkedin, but don’t provide recommendations for my connections, as I don’t want the world to know with whom I have close relationships – it’s nobody else’s business. Publishing your close relationships can work against you when you are competing for business and your connections reveal your closest associates.

This is not to say that social media cannot be used for marketing purposes. Social media is here to stay and will grow for a while yet as part of marketing strategies – there are dozens of successful case studies. One of my winery clients is successfully using Facebook and YouTube to create customers. Recently the under-25 who ran the social media activity resigned. Consequently there has been no social activity for a few weeks, because they don’t have the personnel available to dedicate the time necessary to keep the sites up to date. Of course this means the site is in danger of becoming dated.

One of the biggest costs in social media marketing is head hours – it’s also the cost that often gets ignored when analyzing ROI. Another of our clients has two public relations people working roughly 40-hours a week between them to run their social media activity and they are being costed as public relations, not social media.

If want to use social media to build your online fan-base there are loads of online resources to help you. All you need to do is determine your budget, then hire somebody or outsource to get it done. Or you could give up something you are doing now and do-it-yourself. But be careful to plan what else you are going to give up as the demands grow to keep your social sites up to date and the pressure increases on you to continuously add new content.

Then the real questions will reveal themselves – how much is my time really worth, what price do I pay for a brand fan and is this the best way to improve my bottom line?

Social media tips for building loyal customers (known digitally as brand fans)

Fans are self-organising…they cannot be managed. Social media is the world of narcissism – give your fans the tools to brag and create their personal brands.

Remember, it’s all about the fans – not about your brand.

If you want to grow your fan-base improve your customer service. Find disgruntled customers and make them happy – you can make them loyal for life if you fix their problem – and they’ll tell all their connections.

Only focus on your most likely customers. You don’t want those who aren’t likely to buy from you. You don’t need everybody to Like you.

To learn who your real fans are, look at your database for your best customers.

Behaviour before opinions – analyse what people do, not what they say.

Do the numbers when planning your fan strategy. It is not a low-cost alternative. The head hours are enormous and quite expensive.

Malcolm Auld is one of Australia’s leading marketing educators and is principal of advertising agency, Malcolm Auld Direct, and marketing company, The Marketing Campus. He is author of Email Marketing Made Easy and Direct Marketing Made Easy.