I share my curse because it highlights a very important point: Facebook doesn’t create the vast majority of brand FANS; it provides a place for them to congregate online. In fact, a recent study found that 78 percent of a brand’s FANS are already CUSTOMERS.11 If your products and services stink and you have zero brand loyalty to see you through, then you aren’t apt to have many FANS on Facebook. In fact, the people who like your page in such a scenario may just as easily be detractors looking to post complaints. To build Facebook FANS, you must have a product or service with passionate offline FANS. If you don’t, don’t even bother with this chapter; your time is better spent improving your products and services.
A Tasty Exception to the Facebook Customer-Before-FAN Rule
Chef Matt Fish is a rock star at heart. He grew up listening to KISS (@KISSOnline), Black Sabbath (@OfficialSabbath), and Rocket from the Crypt (@RFTCRFTC), and he’s been playing in bands since he was a teen. It was no wonder, then, that when he opened Melt Bar & Grilled (@MeltBarGrilled) in 2006, he took a rock-and-roll approach to marketing.
Matt promoted his gourmet grilled cheese restaurant like a band and treated every new sandwich like a record release—complete with its own concert poster. In 2009, he launched an email club, a Facebook FAN page, and special Melt Tattoo Family promotion. The deal was simple—get a Melt-inspired, grilled cheese tattoo and receive 25 percent off food and alcohol for life. Four days after launching the Tattoo Family promotion, a regular walked in with a tattoo. Today, over 500 people display their FAN fervor for Melt via body ink.
But you want to know the craziest thing? Matt counts at least five Tattoo Family members who got their tattoos before ever eating at Melt! When asked why, one of the FANS said that he decided to get his tattoo after seeing raving reviews and pics from his Facebook friends. When Matt asked how he would feel if he didn’t like the food, the FAN responded, “Not a chance, dude.”
Melt’s success has surprised Matt in many ways. He’s been featured on the Food Network (@FoodNetwork), named Business Person of the Year, and expanded to five locations. But if you ask him what’s most surprising about his success, he’ll tell you about the FAN who got a grilled cheese sandwich tattoo before ever tasting his grilled cheese. Yes, Facebook can help you create FANS, but you had better deliver the goods if you want to keep them as paying CUSTOMERS.
Before 2010, a consumer became a FAN of a company on Facebook by clicking the Become a Fan button. While this button’s purpose was as clear as day, Facebook came to view it as setting too high a bar for brand interaction. And when you’re trying to increase FAN/brand interactions—and the advertising opportunities that go with them—you want as frictionless an experience as possible.
Enter the Like button. Introduced in a limited fashion on Facebook in 2009, it replaced Become a Fan entirely in 2010. Facebook explained its rationale for the change as follows:
To improve your experience and promote consistency across the site, we’ve changed the language for Pages from “Fan” to “Like.” We believe this change offers you a more light-weight and standard way to connect with people, things and topics in which you are interested.12
While there was some initial user backlash to this change, Facebook held firm, and the Like button is now as commonplace as email, comment, and share across the Web. The Like button does continue to raise an interesting question for all brands: Does one click truly create a brand FAN?
The answer is both yes and no. “Yes” in the sense that clicking Like on a brand page opens the door for direct communications between brands and consumers—the basis of any JOINER audience. “No” in the sense that the “light-weight” expression of positive sentiment that the Like button captures is not exactly the height of brand passion we’d expect from true FANS.
Still, Facebook, Myspace, and other FAN-focused social networks afford companies the opportunity to capture a broader spectrum of both new and veteran FANS. To put it another way: Think of the Like button as the “gateway click” that puts the burden on your company to deepen the FAN relationship over time. It’s a tool that gives consumers the opportunity for more peer-to-peer discussions about your brand.
Think of the like button as the “gateway click” that puts the burden on your company to deepen the FAN relationship over time.
This is a critical point about your FAN audience: Their communications with other FANS are just as important—if not moreso—than your communications directly with them. Online FAN environments provide a virtual watercooler where FANS can discuss your products and services, share tips, and amplify stories about your brand. Remember how we discussed earlier that AMPLIFIERS are a momentary audience because they share your content one moment and are gone the next? Well, your online FANS often also transform into AMPLIFIERS when they want to share their passion with their networks. These AMPLIFIER/FAN hybrids are one of the most powerful dual audiences at your disposal—passionate people willing to share their love of your company with the world.