Organic social retargeting – sharing actionable content to reach the followers of your followers – is happening on your social networks whether you know it or not. This post will tell you, via a short case study, how to create and track your efforts for a Facebook Page.
Background
Company A worked hard to move all the friends from an old profile over to a new Fan Page to become fans. The boss was happy that the Fan Page quickly amassed 1,000 followers, but not so happy when that immediate growth spurt was over, and fan growth leveled off at around 30 per week. Then it slowed to about 15.
This would normally be where people who don’t understand or know the space would say that this is wasteful and not working. Let’s look closer, though:
- The page is still growing.
- The company has invested in constant, new, fresh, and interesting content to share.
- The Fans realize that there is great stuff on the page.
- They interact, with a CTR (click through rate) of 40% and there are about 30 comments and likes on posts per week (5% of total fans).
- Bosses think that the same things are happening, week after week, with no results.
- There is a barely-functioning website.
The Case Study
So what does all this mean? How is the page even amassing Fans without a functioning website or other programs to drive them over to Facebook? It’s called social retargeting, and in this instance, it’s organic (as in, not done with paid ads, but with actionable content).
How does this work? 40% of 1,500 fans is 600. 600 Fans every single week are CLICKING on a link on the Fan Page (this does NOT include views, likes, comments, or looking at photo albums).
The retargeting does NOT come from all 600 clicks. If every click-through registered back on the fan’s home page, the reach to eyeballs would be around 240,000 per week. (This is based on the fact that the target market for Company A skews younger (mid 20s) and they have far more than the average of 150 friends. More like 400.)
Instead, it’s the 30 comments and likes on posts that are being shown back on the fan’s home page as “Joey liked/commented on Company A’s post/video/photo” and then Joey’s friends see that, and are exposed to the company. Organic social retargeting.
30 fans doing this x 400 friends of each fan = Exposure to 12,000 other people. That’s not 240,000, but it’s a reach to a TARGETED 12,000, weekly. Who better to target your brand to than the friends and followers of those who already like it and engage with it? I would go so far as to say that 12,000 is probably too generous, given that a home page acts as a feed, and many of the fan’s friends will never see that activity. Let’s reduce by half to 6,000.
In a week, on average, the company is getting its name in front of 6,000 high-quality potential customers, using a free tool and the cost of one person’s salary. Every week now, it has about 15 new fans from these efforts (as the website is not yet driving traffic this way). It’s not much (.25%), and of course, this is only one benefit.
Compare this to a radio effort. A campaign is run on several stations, many times a day, for two weeks. It costs $40,000, artificially inflates website traffic, (as they go there to RSVP for an event), targets an audience of a couple of million people, and yields 100 leads, with 10 appointment sets (appointment sets being the ultimate measure of success). The rate of return on this effort, not including the cost, is .005%, significantly lower than the new Fans from Facebook and social retargeting. The campaign ran for 2 weeks, while the Facebook efforts run every single week, all year round.
In Conclusion: Content is still King
As long as we are keeping our fans engaged and interested, we will increase our number of followers of our brand. As we get more followers, different people will engage and expose the brand to all of their followers. It’s a slow, un-glamorous process, and requires commitment, research, foresight, and creativity.
Now tell me I “play” on Facebook all day. Go ahead, I dare you.