How To Turn Facebook Into Your Single-Most Effective Marketing Tool

The most common marketing mistake is focusing on the product and not the customer. Messages about the product and its benefits without reference to the person who will use it constitute announcements, not marketing.

In order to speak to customers so that you will be heard, you need to make sure that they feel that they are being heard.  And the only way to make the kind of impression on a customer that makes her choose your product over the myriad of options is to speak to her emotions.  This requires having a deep understanding of your customers.

The potential for using Facebook to help understand your customers is seriously undervalued.  In this respect Facebook can be your best friend.

Facebook provides a way to really get to know people, to promote conversations and to listen to customers in a way we never had before.  It’s an opportunity to be a fly on the wall of real conversations about your brand, and to hear the language, desires, and emotions of the people who Like it.  Research may claim that a good percentage of people Like a brand to find out about discounts, but using Facebook as a discount delivery system is missing an opportunity that could make a real difference to the bottom line.

One of the best ways to integrate your Facebook experience into your marketing is to use what you learn to build personas.

Personas are the life stories of several particular people — a composite of traits — that help you visualize and intuit the needs of your customers.  Personas help avoid the impossible task of speaking to hundreds of thousands of people in an intimate way or the opposite — which is to speak to the single image companies tend to have of “our customer.”

Creating a persona is not about research, it’s about relationships.

Four years ago, when we first tried to create personas for our customers at Lion Brand, it was a real challenge.  The personas were somewhat superficial and there was more guessing than understanding.  Today, thanks in large part to the way we communicate on Facebook, we have been able to flesh out several personas who who represent the majority of our customers.  We know their political views, what inspires them, what other brands they Like, what other hobbies they have, what their concerns are for the future, how they feel about the places they shop for our product and so, so, much more.  Anecdotal? Yes. That’s what a persona is.

Research is not the answer to understanding your customers.

Companies spend over $7 billion a year on market research, yet about 8 out of 10 new products fail.  While that can’t all be blamed on the ineffectiveness of market research, it doesn’t make a great case for the value of using market research in understanding the customer.

When our company makes changes to the copy on our website, plans a new product, creates an ad, or develops content for our blog and newsletter, we have a point of reference.  That point of reference is not ourselves and our own ideas. It’s our ability to understand and think about the real people who value our brand.

Here is an example of a brand that started a conversation on Facebook, with a certain assumption that came from referencing their own ideas.  Sephora, most likely wanting to know more about whether to focus their blogger outreach by age ranged asked

“Do you want to read a beauty blogger close to your own age?”

But what they learned was that for some customers, age isn’t the main issue with comments like these:

• “Kind of – I don’t want someone too old nor someone too young but I also prefer people closer to my skin color and skin issue.”
• “I look for beauty blogger with my or similar skin tone and coloring! That way when they recommend something I know it will work for me .”

The information that Sephora received was not in the question. It was in the conversation.

Here are 7 tips to help you connect with the people who visit your Facebook page, and facilitate the kind of meaningful conversations that allow you to develop personas.

These are not the same tips that are designed to strategically raise your Edgerank, although they are likely to do so.  The point is to understand people on a deeper level.

• Speak to people in a down-to-earth way that reflects the way that you would speak to a customer if you were her friend. (also known as authentic brand voice)
• Mix up the type of update.  Real people don’t always shoot questions at other people. They don’t always show photos of what interests them. Communication is not a program that you automatically generate.
• Ask open ended questions.  These are questions that start with “What,” “Where,” “When,” “Why,” and “How.”
• Ask thought provoking questions. Your questions should leave room for a reader to ramble a little to get to something you didn’t even imagine to ask. These questions tend to start with “If.”
• Study the numbers.  What kinds of conversations generated the most comments?
• Read every single comment.
• When you see a comment from a person who you feel represents one of your personas, click through to her Facebook page to learn more about her.  Depending on privacy settings, you’ll have an unparalleled opportunity to get to know her as a true friend might.

How do you develop consumer personas? Do you incorporate intelligence gathered from social media interactions? What do you think about incorporating the ideas above? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.