Do You "Like" Me? Should I Care? - Julie Roehm

This week I was in LA with the super smart people at iOTX and Ipsos talking about new media research tools and dashboards with gasp actionable insights for CMO39s As a former marketing chief I can tell you that there are very few CMO39s that lack data What we lack more than not are insights that connect the dots and lead us to actions that address our strategic needs Research that makes sense of all of the data that we have that are typically disparate and lack any real direction in terms of quotwhat do to do as a resultquot or to quote Shelley Zalis of Ipsos quotWhere39s the there therequot Social media has made that even more difficult Like many other illmeasured media social media is a place where most marketers know they must be but few know how to correlate the resource allocation and spend to bottom line growth And it39s not their fault There are just very few solid measurements out thereFacebook is the obvious and biggest space for marketers interested in capitalizing on social media On a daily basis we are inundated with case studies of marketers quests to earn quotlikesquot or quotsharesquot or quotfansquot on or for their Facebook page efforts And why Well because there have been more than a few studies that suggest that a quotlikequot generates consideration and maybe even a sale so we watch and try to learnamp8230fast But the measurement of the quotlikequot and the other Facebook measures only conjures up further questions in my mind For instance how do 1000 quotlikesquot compare with say four feet of space on a retail shelf If you have a limited budget how can you compare the value generated from the resources required to generate a meaningful number of quotlikesquot against those for a TV buy or an instore promotion The answers to these questions are really important because at the end of the day those are the decisions and tradeoffs that marketers have to make every day when allocating their budget and resourcesI would submit that to get to that answer we have to pull apart the measures and then try to reaggregate them For instance what is a quotlikequot really and are they all created equal Intuitively I think we can all agree that the answer is quotnoquot I read an article in Ad Age where Dave Williams of Blinq Media said quotMarketers need to view Facebook advertising the way they view visiting a cocktail party where the goal isn39t to close a deal but to come away with a business card Getting a user to quotlikequot a brand or engage with it is like getting that business card Trying to get a user to buy when you first meet them is a mistake too many marketers make and it makes them look like an overeager insurance salesman cornering people at a party quotWhile this may be true it gets us no closer to the value that quotbusiness card exchangequot gets us to a measurable resultI then read an article in the May issue of Trendwatching where they offered some case studies and also some ways to break down the meaning of a quotlikequotThree quarters of Facebook users have 39Liked39 a brand Source AdAge Ipsos February 2011amp8226 Juicy Couture found that their product purchase conversion rate increased by 160 after installing social sharing features Source CreateTheGroup February 2011amp8226 Incipio Technologies a gadget accessory retailer found that referrals from Facebook had a conversion rate double the average Source Business Insider March 2011amp8226 But it39s not just about Facebook Take for example the explosive rise of the daily deal site Groupon which used referrals from friends and colleagues to drive sales of over 40 million deals in the two and a half years since it launched in November 2008 via email To make sense of this Trendwatchingcom broke down the Facebook measures into something they call the FFactor So according to them here are just five of the ways that the FFACTOR influences consumption behavior1 FDISCOVERY How consumers discover new products and services by relying on their social networks2 FRATED How consumers will increasingly and automatically receive targeted ratings recommendations and reviews from their social networks3 FFEEDBACK How consumers can ask their friends and followers to improve and validate their buying decisions4 FTOGETHER How shopping is becoming increasingly social even when consumers and their peers are not physically together5 FME How consumers39 social networks are literally turned into products and servicesWhether you like these measures or are in the midst of exploring your own the fact is that we need some that are more meaningful than what we have today Social media is important but we don39t know yet how important and if we are to begin to understand the power of the Tweet the quotlikequot the post or the share we are going to need to start to break down the social chimney and apply these measures to the myriad of other measures we have in every other medium While we have become far more quantitative in marketing and have generated much better attribution of our efforts to the bottom line we are also becoming overwhelmed with data that make no sense when compared to everything else Social media while the darling of today has the chance to be truly meaningful and even to help us make sense of the measures in other media So while we are fascinated and impressed by how much we are quotlikedquot that alone is not enough to convince the Csuite nor to sustain the mediums popularityJulie Roehm is currently consulting for a host of companies in the area of marketing strategy and execution The companies include large media companies ad agencies interactive television technology companies financial services private equity media companies automotive new media startups and others She frequently is engaged to speak at industry and corporate events globally and is a periodic guest contributor on Fox Business News blogs for iMedia and is the official marketing auto blogger for AOL Julie can be reached at roehmjuliegmailcomRead all Julie39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Julie RoehmCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerMediaBizBloggers is an openthought leadership blog platform for media marketing and advertising professionals companies and organizations To contribute contact Jackmediadvisorygroupcom The opinions expressed in MediaBizBloggerscom are not those of Media Advisory Group its employees or other MediaBizBloggerscom contributors Media Advisory Group accepts no responsibility for the views of MediaBizBloggers authors

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Do You "Like" Me? Should I Care? - Julie Roehm

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