FACEBOOK FAN PAGES: THE FUTURE OF CRM

This video on Facebook fan pages shows that there is still a long way to go before these pages really reach their potential. Lots of brands are developing Facebook fan pages, and my agency is no exception. But like any new innovation there is a gimmick stage, and then the real business begins. These pages now need to work harder to truly capture the imaginations of cynical consumers, and budget-squeezed marketers.

Brands now have pages with thousands, and sometimes millions of fans, but what do they do with them?

Unfortunately, most brands and a very few agencies will know the answer, or have the resources to tackle the question. The combination of skills required to make these pages work is not in place in most agencies. Plus many brands create these pages with the wrong intentions, and are chasing the latest thing to tick on a box on the marketing plan, rather than understanding the radical repercussions it could have on their business.

For me Facebook fan pages are a key building block in the future of CRM.

This involves:

- Structuring your page intelligently to reflect different customer needs
- Design a customer life cycle or migration map that moves fans through each need stage
- Segment fans by influence, sentiment, activity, and other variables to differentiate what you say and offer to them
- Reward and incentivize high value fans
- Move towards one-to-one approaches
- Track and measure obsessively
- Integrate Facebook into the brand's broader digital ecosystem

Understand in CRM, that the Holy Grail of metrics, is customer lifetime vale (LTV). Build models, and optimise your campaigns to drive these LTV models.

This is all very serious stuff, and a world away from how most brands use fan pages, but watch this space. Facebook Fan Pages, the future of CRM.

IAB SOCIAL MEDIA COUNCIL RESEARCH SHOWS BUDGETS SET TO INCREASE

One of the first things we have issued this year, at the Internet Advertising Bureau's Social Media Council, is some research into social media's progress. We are hoping to see it become an index, and a barometer of social media's progress in the UK.

The study, conducted in partnership with research company Opinion Matters, found that:

• Social media will be getting greater budget allocations this year

• Responsibility for social media within client organisations spans a number of departments, suggesting a need for ‘social media teams’ representing a range of skillsets such as marketing, PR and customer service

• Driving brand awareness and consideration are the most popular uses of social media

• Marketers identify the main challenges for social media as measurement and proving ROI

There was lost of great stuff in the research, but the most interesting stat for me was that a third of advertisers are planning to allocate between 6 and 20% of their digital marketing budgets on social media in 2010, compared with just 14% in 2009.

The study - conducted amongst 80 senior level marketers – found that only 7% of respondents yet haven’t embraced social media in any way, with 22% having made it a core part of their communications strategy, 20% feeding it into most campaigns, 23.5% using social media in ad hoc projects and 27% having tested it with a view to using again.

The chart below illustraes this progress
This means that:

1. Digital is eating into traditional media budgets
2. Social media is eating into traditional digital budgets
3. Social media consequently becomes ubiquitous and consumes traditional media

Social media is the revolution within the revolution.

There's a great summary of the research at the IAB.

DIFFUSION OF INNOVATION THROUGH THE SOCIAL WEB

We are in an age of experimentation. Everyday in digital, people are doing things that no one else has ever done before. However, agencies tend not to do lots of forecasting, but clients are increasingly demanding more evidence that a campaign is going to work before signing up. Mastering models like these are going to be increasingly important, so I say forecasting and modelling digital programs is the new Holy Grail.

I've been experimenting with the Bass Diffusion Model, as I attempt to advance my knowledge in this area beyond Everett Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations. Bass focuses more on new products and how they get adopted as an interaction between users and potential users.

I see an easy application for the model and how it can be used to forecast spread of contagious ideas, and general marketing ideas across the social web.

We frequently talk in digital and online PR about targeting influencers and innovators, but use few formulae to demonstrate their impact. Both charts on this page, show how important they are to the spread of ideas and products. With better maths in this area, will also come better mechanisms for managing these programs.