One of the most discussed topics these days in the world of digital marketing is whether or not social media marketing is actually an effective means of marketing. Social media is definitely a huge part of consumers’ lives but do brand pages actually drive ROI? This is a difficult question to answer, mostly because the short answer would be no. You can’t measure how many people bought you’re product because you have a Facebook page. What you can do is measure how much traffic you get back to your site because of engagement on Facebook and use other metrics to determine how much more business that is actually giving you. Fortunately a study has recently been done which sheds some light on the subject.
The study measures whether engagement with a Brand’s fan page lead to increased visitation to their web site. Specifically they analyzed the frequency of visitation to owned websites thirty days prior to and after an individual liked that brand’s page. The interesting part of the findings was that just liking the page didn’t drive increased traffic if there was little interaction with the page after the initial liking. However, consumers who returned to the Facebook page two or more times visited the brand’s website at four times the rate. On average there is an 85% lift in the number of visits to a brands web site from people who repeatedly returned to the Facebook page.
What this means is that Facebook can and will drive consumers to your web site and eventually to a purchase decision but it is repeated exposure to social content overtime that drives this. I emphasize social here because ads and promotions are not social, not to say that you shouldn’t use them at all on your page, but they alone will not drive repeat engagement and therefore visits to your website. You need to deliver content to your fans that will engage them and keep them coming back for more.
Need help coming up with great content to give your fans and keep them engaged? Having problems finding the value in Facebook Marketing? Contact Wikimotive for a free evaluation of your social media marketing strategy and advice on how you can improve.