by Jay Miletsky
As I was flying down to Dallas for a meeting earlier this week, I was half-heartedly flipping through the US Airway’s in-flight magazine when a short but interesting article caught my eye. It was a reprint of an article from the Harvard Business Review, about whether or not social networking can actually show any measurable results when it comes to brand building and marketing. What made it interesting (other than the results), was that they didn’t focus on a major brand, which would make for a more obvious case study. Instead, they focused on a smaller company called The Dessert Factory – a Houston-based bakery and café chain.
According to the report, journalists Utpal M. Dholakia and Emily Durham sent a poll to The Dessert Factory’s 13,000-plus e-mail database and received a bit over 600 responses back. They then launched a Facebook Fan page, invited their customers to become fans, and spent the next three months regularly updating the page with pictures of desserts, info on the people who worked at The Dessert Factory, sales, contests and promotions. At the end of the three month trial period, they re-sent the original poll, this time getting back over 1,000 responses from people who were fans on Facebook, people who weren’t fans on Facebook and people who didn’t use Facebook at all. After comparing data between the two surveys, the results were eye-opening to say the least.
Across the board, it appeared that a simple Facebook Fan page was able to positively affect consumer behavior. People who were fans of The Dessert Factory visited the stores 20% more often, were more likely to go out of their way to visit The Dessert Factory as opposed to a competitor, spent a larger portion of their dining budget at the chain, were more likely to recommend the brand to friends and family, and on a four point scale felt a stronger emotional bond to the brand than did those who were not fans.
It’s a great study that makes a strong case for the benefits social networking can have, even for smaller brands. But it did make me wonder why. After all, people could find specials and promotions in their local newspaper. They could enter contest in the outlets themselves. They could see plenty of dessert images on the company’s Web site. So why would a fan page alone be able to make such a dramatic difference?
The reason is the inherent buy-in. Not to over-simplify, but there is power in the word “fan.” Assuming technology stayed the same, if Fan pages were instead named Awareness pages, for example, it’s unlikely the Harvard Business Review study would have yielded such positive results. There’s a distinct difference between being a fan of a brand, and being aware of one. The Fan page has taken what had previously been a vague concept – brand loyalty – and made it visible. And once it’s visible, it becomes actionable. By listing themselves as fans, consumers publicly proclaim their brand loyalty, increasing their incentive for demonstrating this loyalty by actively supporting it through real sales and word-of-mouth.
For any company, achieving true loyalty is the gold standard in consumer/brand relationships. Fan pages give this loyalty a public face, and can ultimately prove beneficial for brands of all sizes.
