Identifying Success
The following sections focus on issues you should consider as you look at the big-picture marketing plan.
Going Beyond the Numbers
It’s easy to fall into the number game: “How many fans or Likes do you have on Facebook?” The more instructive question is this: how many of your fans do you actually interact with? To really understand the value of your Facebook marketing page, answer these questions:
• How much attention do you give to each customer?
• How quickly do you respond to a comment on Facebook?
• What do your most passionate fans get out of your Facebook page?
 | DEFINITION |
When a Facebook user Likes your business page, product, event, or story, a “so-and-so likes your company” message appears on his Facebook Wall for all of his Facebook friends to see.
Use the answers to these questions to home in on what brings customers back. Accumulating more Likes is great, but you should make sure that you maintain a good relationship with the customers you currently have. We’ll talk about this more in Chapter 9.
Campaign by Campaign
Not every marketing campaign should lead with Facebook. The social network isn’t a one-size-fits-all site.
Let’s say you’re doing a campaign targeting musicians. Facebook may be the fastest-growing social network at the moment, but musicians still tend to prefer MySpace because it has the best music interface among the social networks. You might use Facebook as a spoke within the campaign wheel, but you’ll still want to base the entire hub of the campaign on MySpace because it has more of your desired audience.
 | WATCH OUT |
It’s easy to dismiss once-ubiquitous social networks like MySpace in favor of Facebook, but keep in mind that some social networks are more popular overseas. For instance, Hi5 (www.hi5.com) barely made a dent in America, but it’s one of the largest social networks in Japan and Australia. Consider what your audience is using before limiting your social networking marketing strategy to Facebook.
That’s the beauty of social networking: Facebook or any other social networking site can be the lead, or it can serve as the secondary or tertiary support within your marketing campaign.
Measure Success
How do you measure success? Here are some of the many ways to quantify your Facebook marketing’s effectiveness:
• Pure numbers: Higher sales figures than the previous quarter.
• Brand awareness: Using studies to see how familiar people are with your company.
• Customer interaction: Seeing an increase or decrease in the number of people visiting your Facebook page (see Chapter 16).
In the end, only you can determine which stats are the most useful for showing you the effectiveness of your Facebook campaign. This book helps you determine the best one for your unique needs.