Facebook Tips: Get the Right Message to the Right Audience

Watershed moments can come in unusual places. In 2007, Clara Shih had one in a tiny noodle shop located on a nondescript Hong Kong side street when she overheard two old men talking about Facebook.

“It seemed like the wrong place, the wrong language, and the wrong demographic,” Shih, founder and CEO of Hearsay Corp. told an audience at a Direct Marketing Club of New York luncheon. But as she listened she understood their interest in what was then a nascent social network which boasted barely 20 million members.

“Their story was they had never met their grandchildren who were living abroad,” Shih says. “Facebook was the only way they could know their grandchildren.”

Facebook has grown a touch during the intervening four years, with current users topping a half-billion people. Its importance to marketers has similarly expanded: Shih cites a survey in which 72.5% of U.S. companies consider social media a top marketing priority.

To aid with their efforts, she has developed what she calls “Seven Habits of Highly Successful Facebook Marketers”.

One: Target your messages. The amount of data generated by Facebook is new, thanks to friends and “like” buttons. Marketers can arrange to have Facebook serve up ads, or have sponsored stories appear in news feeds, based on a variety of user attributes. And these can be purchased on a pay-per-click or per-thousand-impressions basis.

Using the sort by characteristics feature, which indicates the quantity of Facebook users falling into selected categories, marketers can determine whether Facebook offers access to a critical mass of people interested in their wares. “If not, go to LinkedIn,” says Shih.

Two: Know when to use which medium. Small businesses are ditching Web sites and moving to Facebook, says Shih. True, they lose control and flexibility regarding how their messages are presented – but for those that don’t have the time or money to constantly update their Web pages, posting promotions to a Facebook wall is a relatively easy way to keep their content fresh.

Larger companies which maintain their own sites successfully can still reap benefits from an active Facebook presence—the network can help them reach younger demographic groups, and provides a forum for testing campaigns.

Three: Be authentic, be human. “E-mail campaigns are starting to feel very impersonal,” says Shih. By way of contrast, Frank Eliason, the former senior director in national customer operations, brought a human face to the cable company’s online operations and developed a following dripping with goodwill.

“Sometimes, when Frank was away, customers stepped up and responded [to correspondents’ concerns],” says Shih. “Comcast’s call center burden went down. There was a real cost savings.”

Four: Invest in killer content. “Content is still king,” according to Shih. “Get local and stay current. You can’t just created a profile and walk away. Facebook has created expectations that consumers’ Web experiences will be targeted and personalized for them and their social circles.”

Five: Measure, but don’t get too hung up on ROI. Marketers should consider a customer’s value beyond direct transactions. Shih offers a metric she calls Social CLV (customer lifetime value). Under this, an individual’s transaction value would be augmented with word-of-mouth referrals, the savings realized by a customer support structure when this individual steps in to answer questions and sales resulting from ideas suggested by the individual.

Six: Understand that social media is a team sport. In addition to content providers, employees on a firm’s product team, customers, legal and compliance employees and IT professionals. “These stakeholders should be involved early on,” says Shih.

Seven: Have fun and keep learning. “For those of you who take a little bit of extra time to innovate there is tremendous upside,” Shih says. She tells the story of Pizza Hut’s initial foray into Facebook, which produced a very low conversion rate. The problem? Initially consumers had to leave Facebook and go to the Pizza Hut site to place their order. This meant they had to leave their chat sessions and friends.

Pizza Hut changed its methods, creating an app that allows Facebookers to place their order right on the site —and which posts an update to the customer’s news feed. “Pizza Hut gets free social advertising, and people trust their friends,” says Shih. “And right from [the customer’s] profile, you can click and order too.”