Is your Marketing Social by Design

Facebook is the fundamental ingredient, says Facebook

I read this interesting article earlier this week on Ad Age, Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook's Chief Operating Officer) speaking at the Association of National Advertisers in Phoenix last week.

Sandberg had a few key messages to share which I've summarised here:

• Make marketing (and business) "social by design" - yet given her position at Facebook she is really saying make your marketing "Facebook by design"?
• For Facebook not only is overall sharing doubling every year via "Zuckerberg's Law," she noted, but the number of daily fan page "likes" also has doubled in the past year to 100 million daily
• "If you look at the numbers for almost any brand, but certainly any brand that's invested any time or effort on Facebook, the number of people who are your Facebook friends massively dwarfs the number of people who visit your website,"
• "So I think one of the questions this industry needs to ask itself is why? Why continue to build as many micro-sites as we do when we know it's so much easier to reach people where they already are?"
• "Other ads only talk one way," whereas operating within Facebook with "for the first time, real identity, real relationships, real personalisation, marketing can really fulfil its promise."

Facebook are cleverly citing Nielsen data now too, and so able to position themselves more aggressively in the marketers mind with case studies such as American Express. I think this is a good thing, using data is.

Is it misleading though?

I fear so. The silver bullet attitude towards "SEO" has always worried me (a blog post I'll write sometime!) but then reading this, Sandberg is making a few bold statements that I'd suggest are very misleading regarding Facebook's potential too. Common sense and the ever growing list of marketing silver bullets through history (Facebook / social media, SEO, direct marketing, advertising) surely we can learn that integrating is best, using a relevant mix of media that's totally focussed on your customer being the focus, that of course being dependent on objectives and budget too? Or, is it just me?

Our three considerations

1. Be careful with "fans on Facebook massively dwarf website visits?". Engagement and interaction on (owned media) your domain vs Facebook will be "massively" different too! Time spent with your brand will be more on your owned media sites, than outposts like Facebook, the quality (in terms of purchase intent) is likely more too given that they've come to you
2. Facebook is only an engagement platform IF your fans visit you Facebook page regularly. Remember Jeff Widman (of Pagelever) cites harsh data bursting this bubble (1 in 200 see your posts less that 5% ever come back to your page)? So, we sadly see it, Facebook is most often leveraged as just a broadcast platform pushing messages into the consumers wall, messages they most likely will not see much of!
3. "Social by design" sounds a relevant mantra, I'd prefer to see "Customer by design". The consistent truth in all of the talk of media, content or social is the the customer - the rest or just means to communicate. Just consider where else your customer is online to realise that Facebook is not the only place… social radar and Brian solis prism

Dave has written before on owned, vs paid, vs earned media - this post by Joel Rubinson is well worth reading on getting into the maths of it for your brand, not surprisingly it's owned media that comes out on top. So don't be so hasty sacking-off micro-sites, instead think about integration of them with Facebook's fantastic plugins like Facebook Connect and Facebook Comments, rather than over-emphasising the importance of Facebook. If you stand back, consider your customer and use data it's common sense, really?