October 5, 2012
It was only a matter of time before Facebook started to look for new ways to make money out of its businesses. We have had premium ads and now the Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg has suggested businesses can expect premium services as well.
Let’s be honest, Facebook has to keep innovating in this area. Some brands on Facebook are starting to scrutinise the real level of engagement they are able to generate through branded pages. The average post from a brand page only reaches 16% of fans according to Facebook .
Speculation is that the new premium services will include better CRM or data management solutions, allowing businesses to understand the behavior of customers and the impact of activity on the platform beyond just likes and clicks throughs. See the full interview on CNBC.
I have always thought the big opportunity is big data. At the moment most brands don’t fully understand the true extent of conversation about them between friends on Facebook.
We know from working with our clients that the interaction you see with a brand on the timeline or page through Facebook insights is just the tip of the iceberg.
Imagine all the data that is potentially available to brands from Facebook. On top of standard stuff, like gender, age, location there is all the stuff they have ever liked, sports teams, clothes, shops, celebrities, other brands etc, plus all the places they have traveled. Overlay that with the same data about friends in their social network and the influence they have on the preferences of their friends – the potential is almost unfathomable!
Imagine the insight this would give you to design new products to optimize your marketing or customer care strategy. I look forward to getting my hands on that data someday soon!