Commentary
Brands Need Fans, Not Friends
- by Ben Elowitz , July 6, 2009
And while 'relationship' is the promise of the social Web, most brands have missed the boat when it comes to their social marketing initiatives. Instead of investing in relationships, brands have largely invested in a token presence on Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. It's no wonder they haven't seen an ROI.
Don't get me wrong, plenty of people go to Facebook or MySpace for plenty of reasons; your brand just isn't one of them. My company recently completed a study of the entertainment sector, for example. What we found was that while there were plenty of fan pages for TV shows & movies, and they had thousands or even hundreds of thousands of 'friends', these members did not actually engage. In fact, we didn't find a single brand that had even close to one engagement action (comment, photo, video, etc.) per fan. Let's face it: people are on social networks to do just that, socialize with their friends. Forcing yourself into those conversations puts you in the same class as telemarketers calling during dinnertime. You're interrupting and out of context.
So how can your brand benefit from its fans online? The solution is not to barnacle onto existing social networks, but to create your own -- either building it yourself or using any of the various solutions in the marketplace. By doing this, you'll attract your brand superfans -- the people who will actually want to interact with your brand. These superfans will do more than you ever imagined, without a dollar of marketing spend. Your fans will find you and stick with you if you let them do what they want to do: celebrate and go crazy with your brand. Take, for example, how fans of FOX's popular show Dollhouse recently played an integral part in the show's renewal by orchestrating campaigns on the Official Dollhouse Fansite and creating fansites like www.SaveTheDollhouse.com. FOX's ownership of the fansite allowed the network to interact with the show's supporters and gain greater insight into the show's popularity, eventually influencing their strategic decision to bring the property back.
It's clear why this matters to brands and should matter to you: your biggest fans are your most valuable and authentic social marketing vehicle. If you invest in a true relationship with them, you'll be able to move and react quickly to their ever-changing needs, and even ask them for help. It doesn't take much to keep them happy - just creating a special and honored place and engaging in honest dialogue. When you invite them in, you unleash their willingness and desire to recruit other fans that will gush and rave online with them. Just look at Starbucks' MY Starbucks Idea campaign from last year, which by the way, is still going strong with the coffee community. Starbucks built an environment where their fans and customers could come together and discuss ways to improve the already immensely popular café experience. Starbucks fans have submitted, discussed, and voted on somewhere around more than 60,000 ideas since the site went up. That's impressive online engagement, to say the least, for a company who hasn't been top of mind when it comes to successful internet campaigns. No matter what industry you're in, when fans beget fans, you've got a recipe for continued success.
To take the next big step in monetizing fans' passion online, you have to go beyond having a page on the social nets. Build an environment where fans can connect with other fans as well as your brand because they love it, not because it's there. This is an environment where you're not just one among thousands of brands. It's an environment where your brand is the destination.
Isn't getting a consumer to a branded social network the metaphorical equivalent of asking consumers to go beyond picking up the dinner time phone call and instead go over to the telemarketer's house to have the conversation? And doesn't that limit the brand to only having superfans on their social networks? I'd argue it'd be more powerful to give those superfans a reason to spread your message on their social network of choice rather than joining a new one. It still allows for the success of a Starbucks and allows for a win/win where your superfans reach & influence their friends within their social graph. In fact, the two ideas aren't mutually exclusive so long as you make sure that one is publishing out/into to the other.
There could be more comments, but why? Mike hit the nail on the head!
Brands need your money, not fans or friendsies.
Brands need both, clearly.
Having your own, private label social network is great if you're actually staffed (community manager, anyone?) to grow, maintain, and interact with the community in a real way.
But leveraging existing social networks is a great way to enable "your biggest fans" to share their fandom with their friends.
With Facebook Connect, OpenID, Google Friend Connect, OAuth, PortableContacts, ActivityStrea.ms, and the like, you can lower the barrier of entry to your private label commmunity by leveraging the existing community's profiles and social graph.
Ben: I'm fully on board with your comments. We're a middleman in the scenario you describe. We've also seen an 8x improvement in visits by serving that superfan. I don't mean this to be a commercial response, but this is the market we play in.
Brand Thunder's business (customizing a user's browser) is built on helping brands create a persistent connection with these superfans. When brands leverage that connection to keep their fans aware of activity within their community site - it's a pretty powerful combination. We've seen users of our product connect with a brand's community site 8x more often than their average consumer. That's huge. That's also what brands can experience if they have the right mix of an engaged audience, enticing content and a means to keep inviting their users back to their site.
We're just one of a range of products available online that can help brands maintain that presence and most can be implemented with a low level of effort. This is a sweet spot for marketers and one that more are pursuing.
I agree on the overall concept because it is very difficult to impossible to build a meaningful "relationship" with 10,000+ followers or fans. I can also see the benefit of creating a custom space for the most excited and loyal customers to share their comments, complaints and suggestions on a site with like-minded customers.
However, I do think social networks provide an invaluable benefit in terms of awareness. If carefully executed, the quick brush with brands on social networks can lead some potential customers to take the next step to learn more about a brand and ultimately become a contributing member on a custom site and the beginning of a long-term relationship.
I agree with a lot of what you say Ben but I'm also in favour of leveraging existing networks. Without the money that goes into developing sites such as Facebook other smaller players cannot hope to offer a social network with anywhere near as high quality, with such great features.
I'm not sure I would define the high ground in social marketing as creating 'relationships' so much as it is creating 'communities.' This is where the Facebooks of the world can really help...they have the tools and connections to make it effortless to create communities. What's needed to fuel the growth of these communities (whether on an existing site or in a forum you create specifically for it) is a compelling reason to congregate. "I'm a fan of Dial soap" isn't it. Something like "Mothers for protecting their families against H1M1" that allows the community to add to it, moderate it and invite others stands a much better chance.
Thanks to everyone for your insightful comments, you all raise some valid points.
The general theme seems to be an argument for the value of being on the existing (and massive) social networks; the Facebooks, MySpaces, Twitters, and so on. Mike, John, Rob, and Liz all touch on the importance of leveraging the rapid outreach potential inherent in these networks and rightfully so. The power of reaching hundreds to thousands to millions of customers at once cannot and should not be abandoned, that said, I consider them to be more of a distribution outlet than a community, along the lines of what Mickey brought up. Try this example on for size:
The business model of creating a destination for brand enthusiasts to revel and immerse themselves is certainly not a new one. By owning and developing this community space, the brand has control over the end experience and can test out new messaging and products; essentially treating their superfans as guinea pigs (they love to be a part of this process by the way) for insight into where they should direct their efforts (and dollars). A great example is retail brands like Nike and The North Face. Both are fashion leaders and both have adhered to this strategy with great success. Like many other brands, these two leveraged the existing (and massive) department stores as distribution methods for spreading awareness, and even selling products, while maintaining their own B&M stores, albeit smaller, but that attracted their most dedicated aficionados. The Macy’s and Nordstroms of the world are great platforms for introducing style and products to new audiences, while the personal, more boutique stores are perfect for converting a tire-kicker, maybe one-time buyer, into a loyal fan who will go back to their own social networks and evangelize.
Coming back to your comments, I agree wholeheartedly that brands need to leverage the platforms that have the masses already, but also give those ever so valuable evangelists, and potential evangelists, a place to connect with one another and the brand on a more intimate level.