If a customer likes you on Facebook, how often (if ever) does that translate into a sale?
Alchemy Social, which creates and manages social advertising campaigns, recently explored this question. (Note that the company is a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer, meaning it’s part of a group that’s supposed to make it easier for advertisers and marketers to find vendors to meet their Facebook needs.)
Alchemy Social analyzed the link between clicking Like and actually visiting a business’ online store when it managed a Facebook campaign for a telecommunications company. Alchemy tracked fans who were active on the brand’s Facebook page, those who were fans but not active and those who were not fans of the business at all to see how often they visited the company’s online store. (People were tracked using ads on the company’s Facebook page.)
Fans Visit Online Stores
Here’s what the company found: As you might expect, fans are more likely to visit a brand’s store. Website visitors who interacted with the ads were 20 times more likely to hit the brand’s online store than those who didn’t click on the ads. And users who are on Facebook but didn’t interact with the ads were four times more likely to visit the online store than people who are not Facebook users.
Alchemy also found that those who were Facebook page fans made 131 percent more visits to the online store than did Facebook users who did not Like the brand. And, fans made a whopping 639 percent more sorties to the online store than did non-Facebook users. And finally: Once users became fans, they visited the company website 30 percent more than before.
Alchemy crunched the numbers and decided the return on investment of fans acquired while running a Facebook campaign is an eye-popping 1,292 percent. But the company notes, not surprisingly, that “cheap fans become mediocre customers.”
The Lesson
What does this mean?
According to the report: “If you type 'Facebook fans' into a search engine, you will return an endless number of companies offering to sell 'cheap fans,' or fans at very low rates.” It went on to state that, “These services do not consider a brand’s core target audience and will not pay attention to the value the fan brings after being acquired. Fans acquired with no threshold put on the quality of the fan will rarely convert into customers and their commercial worth is purely aesthetic.” Translation: If you need a lot of Facebook fans to justify your existence, fine, but they won’t translate into sales. (Click here for the secret to a perfect Facebook post.)
The company also offered some tips for maximizing your page’s potential for fan engagement. Running a competition is often a great way to pick up a lot of fans if you let users vote and share, because there are lots of opportunities to go viral. You also need to give people reasons to return to your page. (Click here for the best times to post to Facebook.)
How do you attract fans on your Facebook page, and what do you do to engage them? Do you see any link to your online sales?
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