A refreshing approach from Facebook today, when they said exactly what frustrated marketers have been waiting to hear. At a conference in London, David Parfect, the group head of agency sales at Facebook urged brands to look beyond the number of fans they have on their Facebook page. This, he said, only goes some way to communicating the value of your community, suggesting instead that you look at how engaged your fans are. While this type of thinking may not be new to many marketers and brands who have avoided the Like race, it’s still nice to hear it straight from the horses mouth.
It’s also particularly welcome given that this is coming from someone responsible for growing revenue at Facebook. Not just encouraging people to buy, buy and buy fans again but to think about what you’re actually going to do with them when they get to your page. It shows an element of responsibility from Facebook when a lot of their recent decisions have been geraed towards heavy investment in order to get any significant return from the platform (think iframe applications). Parfect also hinted at the wider potential of social media, where he discussed that ‘marketers need to change the way they think, and social media should not be siloed’. This kind of thinking is needed, particularly among larger brands who have yet to integrate social media fully into their marketing plans, instead seeing it as an easy add-on.
Facebook focusing on quality
This move away from thinking in numbers, which the Like button has been so tailored towards, seems to be in line with recent thinking from the site. They have just announced their creative hub for advertisers : Facebook Studio. This is an interesting move from the site, as it shows a desire to be considered differently by brands, less as a place for simply growing numbers as quickly as a possible, and more as a place to be innovative and creative. Their advertising targeting options are certainly sophisticated, but up until now the ad format hasn’t really leant itself to creativity. That could change though, if their Facebook studio takes off, at it’s expected launch next month. A project like this is certainly welcome and needed, as Facebook have a somewhat difficult job to to do now. They’ve convinced brands and users that it’s the place to be, but now they need to stay ahead of the curve and remain relevant.
It’s possibly an inevitable outcome for Facebook, that the more their numbers grow, the more this affects the quality of service that people enjoy. Parfect’s advice is spot on and brands should listen to this, if you want your consumers’ experience of you to continue to be a good one. If people are simply being ‘farmed’, they’ll catch on pretty quickly. The new Facebook Studio fits in here, as Facebook claim it’s about encouraging engagement, away from the traditional click through conversion rates. If advertising can move away from this model, then there’s exciting times ahead.
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