The Value of a Like: How to Get the Most from Facebook Page Insights – Exclusive Grovo Video and Tips
By Nick Narodny, Cofounder and SVP of Business Training, Grovo.com
Data is the most valuable commodity in the world, and Facebook is swimming in it.
In May of 2011, Americans spent over 50 billion minutes on Facebook, according to a report by Nielson. That same month, Facebook’s Chief of Ad Sales announced that on average, 50 million likes per day are distributed over Facebook Pages. That’s a lot of minutes, a lot of likes, and a lot of free data that users are funneling into Facebook.
So what do those minutes and likes mean for agencies and brands investing time and resources in marketing a Page on Facebook?
On the surface, it means data for brands to learn about their customers’ online habits. But that data can also help a company put a dollar value on a Facebook like.
In light of an imminent IPO, Facebook’s own value is constantly being tossed around in the media. One thing’s for sure: Facebook is raking in the ad revenue, bringing in $1.86 billion in 2011. Still, that’s not as much as even Yahoo brings in on ad revenue, but Facebook serves over 50 billion banner ads a month.
All advertising aside, how much value does Facebook’s currency, the like, hold in the real world?
To understand the real value of a Facebook like, here are a couple tips to use Facebook Pages Insights that will put a more accurate value on a like to a brand:
1. Look for new transactions. Brands want to track what effect any marketing or advertising campaign has on their bottom line. When a company launches a new campaign, how is it affecting the bottom line? What’s the ROI?
Especially in a new campaign, the goal is to show an increase in transactions coming from the new strategy. If a company’s social media strategy includes getting Facebook likes, how are those likes affecting the bottom line? Do they have an ROI?
Track new transactions from a Facebook campaign using Google Analytics and Facebook Insights. Compare the transactions happening on your company’s page with the transactions sent from Facebook.
How many new transactions were created directly off your page? How many were created by traffic that came from Facebook to your page.
2. Increased purchase rate. Using Facebook Connect as a login option for your website allows you to record the email addresses of users to see whether or not they are fans of your brand on Facebook.
Compile the email addresses of users who are your fans and non-fans. Is there a difference in purchase rate between the two groups? Make sure your sample size and time period are large enough to make an accurate calculation.
This number will show you if users connected to your brand through Facebook are buying purchasing more from you on average or less compared to non Facebook-connected users.
3. Increased spend/transaction - Using a similar comparison as above, track the emails of users who have logged into your site using Facebook Connect.
Compared to the users on your site not connected with Facebook, who spends more on average? Do Facebook fans tend to spend more on each transaction than non Facebook-connected users?
You can judge the value of your Facebook marketing campaign based on these numbers. If fans are spending more money in each transaction when they are referred to your site from your Facebook page or Facebook link, you know the strategy is working.
Any brand focused on improving their bottom line through a social media campaign should live by the metrics. In order to really understand how valuable a Facebook like is to your business, the first step is to learn how to use Facebook Page Insights effectively in targeting, engaging and growing your most active users.
The data stored from users visiting a website and Facebook page tell a story, a story you can learn to read. That story will tell you how you can improve sales and increase engagement.
As far as likes go, the specific value will change from business to business. The key is to learn the strategies to calculate that value for your brand’s needs. The strategies above can help you dive into the data and read the story it’s telling.
In the meantime, here’s a quick and exclusive instructional Grovo video that illustrates how (and where) to get the most from Facebook Page Insights:
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This is a guest post from Nick Narodny, cofounder and SVP of Business Training at Grovo.com. Grovo is an online education and training platform that helps people find and use sites, and helps sites reach and educate users on everything from Facebook Timeline to Netiquette.
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