• Facebook fans are much more likely to purchase, consider, and recommend brands. Forrester tested against four brands –
  Best Buy, Coca-Cola, BlackBerry, and Walmart — and found that a Facebook fan has a significantly higher probability of brand interaction. “Smartphone owners who are Facebook fans of BlackBerry, for example, are 5.6 times more likely to have made a purchase from BlackBerry in the past 12 months than non-fans, with everything else held equal. And Facebook fans of Best Buy are about twice as likely to purchase from and recommend Best Buy. In the case of Coca-Cola, even though 71% of online Americans purchase the product,
  Facebook fans have a probability of 95% of doing so.“
• Facebook “fandom” has the largest impact on purchase.  For Best Buy, being a Facebook fan meant you were 5.3 times more likely to buy than would a non-fan.  And fans were far more likely to recommend the brand, too.
• The value in your Facebook fan base is in their willingness to recommend. Facebook fans of each brand were much more likely to recommend them than non-fans. BlackBerry owners who were Facebook fans had an 87% probability of recommending BlackBerry to a friend or relative, while a BlackBerry owner who doesn’t engage with the brand on Facebook had a 44% likelihood. And they were three times as likely to recommend BlackBerry as were non-fan smartphone owners.

In other words, marketing via Facebook is incredibly powerful.   It’s why the Lead Generation Machine was created: to let marketers, big and small, leverage social media channels for their extraordinary ability to drive loyalty, conversation and evangelism around their brand and products.

An ad on the Web may do a better job of reaching its audience than, say, a magazine ad. But that doesn’t mean it does a good job.

There’s data to back it up, too, not just anecdotal impressions, provided by Neilsen.  The example campaign, aimed strictly at women, only hit the target 25 percent of the time. 47 percent of the time, the ads were displayed to men.

It’s that “carpet bombing the Internet” analogy we’ve used before.  Facebook and other social media marketing channels are refining the way you can identify and speak to your best possible customer, using an API like the Lead Generation Machine to simplify and expedite the process. That ensures your ad spend is spent more effectively than before.

Because otherwise, you might get better results emptying a basket of cash out the window of your office, with your name and contact info jotted on each bill.

A new study indicates that spending on Facebook marketing doubled in the past year.

On a relative basis, this represents three to five per cent of search spend, indicating social media continues to be a “strong, digital advertising channel”, the authors of the report claim.

Consumer engagement also seems to be improving for brands using social networks. Facebook post engagement increased 176 per cent year-on-year.

The implication is that social media marketing via Facebook is becoming the norm, not the exception.  That means more and more competition, too, for the attention and clickthrough of your audience, if you’re an enterprise looking to exploit Facebook’s ability to connect you with key influencers and strong ties.

But perhaps the most compelling discovery was that…

Engagement is linked to trust, and separate research indicates that more people are prepared to put their faith in brands’ social media messages. Sponsored ads on social networking sites are seen as credible by 36 per cent of global consumers, according to a study by Nielsen.

Facebook is cited by many respondents as being the channel where people are most engaged.  If you’re doing social targeting and social media prospecting, you obviously want to reach people where they’re paying the most attention, and where you’re inserting yourself into social conversations.

Moreover, Facebook is also a social media marketing channel where a marketer can truly uncover and target the “strong ties” that are the foundation of brand evangelism and social media lead prospecting.

But to properly leverage Facebook, a marketer has to remember the key points we’ve mentioned before…which conveniently fall into these “Five Rs”…

• Relevance.  Make sure your message, offer or promotion is meaningful to the “strong tie,” heavy user or other prospect you want to engage.  Many brands – especially large-scale marketers – have a habit of “carpet bombing” Facebook and the social Web with offers or campaigns that aren’t well-targeted or meaningful, acquiring thousands of Likes that signify no real engagement or purchase intent, and rarely have meaning to key influencers.  If you’re not demonstrating your relevance to a social media user from the start, then you’re actually creating an impression of irrelevance in their mind…and they’ll not only ignore or diss you, but potentially pass that attitude along to their followers.
• Reward.  If they’re loyal to your brand or offering, call them out for it and reward them for their behaviors.  Be careful to not seem to be “bribing” strong ties or key influencers to Like or recommend you – but there’s nothing wrong with rewarding them for true brand loyalty, purchase and evangelism.
• Refresh.  Using a real-time platform like Volvant’s Lead Generation Machine, a marketer can constantly update campaigns, offers, and otherwise keep their program agile – and fresh and interesting in the minds of your audience.
• Re-target.  The right social media marketing platform (yep – like Volvant!) should be capable of allowing on-the-fly, real-time re-targeting of social media prospects.  In social targeting, it’s important to remember how fluid and evolving your audience’s interests, connections and key influencers can be, so be sure to audit your audience, and be prepared to re-target leads with new offers or follow-ups.
• Referrals.  Always give quality prospects a way to engage others with your brand or offer.

Mention that to some marketeres and you can see the barriers start to rise. “Sounds like a lot of work,” they say.  So it’s important for them to understand the real impact of social media, on the fact it’s not always a direct response strategy but also a long, gradual play that pays off in a host of ways that go beyond leads and sales.

But there are tools like ours that are beginning to redress the near-term ROI side of the equation, too, delivering immediate results in ways that play to social media’s strength in allowing marketers to precisely gauge and target people’s real interests.

But there again, the issue is all about the quality of the interaction: you’ve got to engage with a message or offer that’s meaningful to the target. Content is king in social media, even when it’s intended as part of a selling strategy.

Mark Schaefer, author of “Return on Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social Scoring, and Influence Marketing,” pointed that out in an interview on CBS This Morning:

“We are really in the middle of a business and communication revolution…Now that we have high-speed Internet and free, easy-to-use publishing tools like blogging and Facebook and Twitter, everybody can publish. Everybody can have influence.

“And companies now … are trying to measure that. They’re trying to quantify how well people can create buzz. And as you can imagine, a lot of big companies and brands want to be all over this. They want to find powerful word of mouth influencers and reward them and give them stuff. I mean, lots of great stuff like trips and gaming systems.”

Be careful, however:  it can be dangerous to “bribe” key influencers.  Some of their followers might respond negatively if they feel the trust and authenticity of the influencers whose word they’ve come to depend upon has been somehow compromised.

The best key influencer is one who naturally and organically adopts and promotes your brand, without being induced, though there’s nothing wrong with judiciously giving them special offers or rewards that are part of a dialogue with them as prized members of your community.   Just so long as those rewards don’t seem like outright, obvious kickbacks…and are also accessible to others who spread the good word!

That advantage comes from the fact that many SMEs survive and thrive by knowing how to deliver personalized customer service and support.  They already do “social marketing,” except it’s across a counter or a phone line or through an email exchange.

By looking at social media marketing as just a logical, digital extension of what they’re already doing so well, there’s a lot less intimidation in using it to target the quality prospects and strong ties that can make SME social media marketing a success.

Buzz and positive word-of-mouth comes from positive product and brand experiences.  A huge part of that involves how intimate and responsive the relationship is between customer and marketer.  SMEs are already equipped to drive that kind of relationship, and should never shy away from playing up the fact they’re more responsive or niche-oriented than bigger companies.

The challenge, of course, is finding the means.  They require cost-effective solutions that don’t involve the complex infrastructure or back-end hassles of previous solutions.

That’s why products like the Lead Generation Machine — completely SaaS/Cloud-based, working intuitively and elegantly, with an absolute minimum of ramp-up — are uniquely valuable to these marketers, who already understand the value of being authentic and communicative in dealing with customers.

ComScore data indicates that consumers who indicate they “Like” a retailer on Facebook — and the Facebook  friends of these consumers –are more likely to buy from that retailer than consumers who aren’t fans, or friends of fans.

The company studied the buying influence wrought by fans and their friends for Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy. It found that consumers who directly “Like” one of those retailers on Facebook are more likely to buy from that retailer than a consumer who has no affiliation with the retailer on Facebook.

Consumers who “Like” Walmart are 40% more likely to make purchases from Walmart.  But what’s surprising is that their friends on Facebook are 25% more likely to make a buy from Walmart, too, versus other consumers who have no social media relationship to the brand, directly or through a social peer.

Gian Fulgoni, chairman of Comcore, explained…

“These results show the degree to which the friends of fans will over-index in their likelihood to buy from a retailer…This is about the amplification of reach, and it is a powerful way for any marketer to impact their business.”

Brands like Walmart and Target are experts at positioning themselves against core consumers, and at staying on-message all the time, at every point of contact.  So their social media messaging and promotions are always relevant to that audience.  That’s a textbook example of how to leverage strong ties to drive recommendations, word-of-mouth and sales.  The same lessons apply to any size business: stay relevant, stay on-message, and target the right individuals: good prospects with strong ties.

The Lead Generation Machine was designed from the ground up to do precisely that: let small to mid-sized businesses have access to all the tools they need to reach and activate those key influencers.

The old model of “pushing” mass messages at consumers is on its last legs. In a marketplace where mobile and social networks allow instant peer-to-peer interaction about preferences and product experiences, being able to reach out to key influencers and engage them on a one-to-one basis is critical.

People aren’t just blindly believing billboards or TV spots anymore: they’re listening to their friends, co-workers and trusted peers across social networks.

So those influencers with strong ties to their personal networks are the new “marketing gold” you’ve got to uncover and engage. The Lead Generation Machine’s integrated business intelligence tools, social analytics and One Click Campaign™ promotion build-and-launch capabilities are all designed to let you do that in real time, delivering real relevancy to the influencers who can help your business the most.

A strong tie is one between people who are very well engaged: think of the people you’ve got on speed dial, who you exchange messages or pleasantries or conversation with on a regular basis.  They might be friends, or family, or simply people who share common interests and are free and open in discussing them.

A weak tie is a person you only contact once in a while: the old friend from high school you exchange Christmas cards with, or the former coworker, or the second cousin in Muncie you keep meaning to visit, or that vendor you’ll get a call from every quarter or so asking for business.  From the standpoint of your own personal network, your “circle of influence,” they’re on the periphery.

Any social community analyst can tell you that strong ties create communication, adaptation and evolution for a group.   The “superusers” or “key influencers” who help drive information and opinions down through their networks are critical, because they’re not just your means of entry into a personal circle that may be considerable in size, but because they’re really and truly often gatekeepers – passing judgment on what’s good or bad, “in” or “out” for them – and the people who listen to their opinions.

If you can A) identify an influencer with interest in your brand, or to topics which align with your brand (to sell athletic gear, reach the person who “Likes” fitness brands and trainers) and B) you can understand their wants, needs and filters in-depth, then you’re going to be able to leverage their strong ties on behalf of your brand.  Their good word and endorsement will help proselytize others, in other words, who trust that good word.

Remember: consumers, increasingly, don’t put their trust in brands…but in trustworthy peers’ endorsement of the brand.