The trap of Facebook Marketing no one talks about
Facebook Marketing is a very efficient tool to acquire new customers. It is a cheap, easy to use and a highly performing marketing channel. It also gives you the illusion you can continue acquiring customers without really knowing who they are. By falling in this trap, you will sooner or later painfully hit the wall.
I’d like to start by saying that I’ve been working in Facebook Marketing for some time now and am totally convinced that it’s the best marketing tool out there. Using the vast amount of data Facebook has about each and every one of us allows marketers to find customers highly efficiently with little money. (For those who are new to this: you can reach 1000 people from your potential target group for as little as 4–5$.)
Any company selling products or just promoting an event, can start advertising on Facebook with practically no knowledge about potential customers or market. You don’t even need to segment the market and create target customer groups. Simply start with a set of Facebook ads, some will be successful and accordingly you will optimize and expand your marketing activities. To grow you will definitely need some nice ads, a great website or app, money for advertising and an ongoing optimization of all of these. You can heavily rely on Facebook (and other similar platforms) in most industries, it will navigate its way through the internet and find some customers for you. Pretty much a dream come true, right? Wrong.
Some of the marketing industries finest experts keep reiterating for decades the importance of understanding customers. Are they right or do they belong to the middle ages of marketing?
Before answering, let’s quickly review the first step in marketing management by P. Kotler:
“Not everyone likes the same cereal, restaurant, college, or movie. Therefore, marketers start by dividing the market into segments. They identify and profile distinct groups of buyers who might prefer or require varying product and service mixes by examining demographic, psychographic, and behavioral differences among buyers. After identifying market segments, the marketer decides which present the greatest opportunities — which are its target markets. For each, the firm develops a market offering that it positions in the minds of the target buyers as delivering some central benefit(s).”
/Marketing Management, by Philip Kotler & Kevin Lane Keller. Prentice Hall, 2012/
This sounds pretty straightforward, however, many startups don’t actually have deep and useful information about their customers. Analytics is our friend, so we know how much time people spend on sites, what products they shop, what percentage abandon their cart, how many people click a button that is green and what’s the uplift is we change it to turquoise. We know their average age and a few other demographics, but is that all that matters? Without customer surveys and deep qualitative analysis, you will not know how your customers think or feel about your product. Why did customers buy it in the first place? Why did they choose your products and not alternatives? What emotional benefits do your products provide? What other customers segments could you reach if you changed a few things about your product or communication? Long story short, by relying only on Facebook ads you are selling blindly. This means Kotler and the other experts have a vital point you should not neglect.
If Facebook marketing works successfully, why should you care?
It’s all about the long game. For a few months or years Facebook marketing will probably do the job for you. Unless you are aiming for a niche segment, Facebook will find enough people for your products or services and scaling will be fun and relatively easy. But what do you do once this growth slows down or the purchasing behaviors change? You won’t have enough information to turn it around since you won’t know the cause for the change. You might have reached everyone who is the best fit for your products, but moving to the second tier group will be immensely difficult without knowing who you are aiming for.
Even if it seems that you can get very far relying on Facebook´s knowledge, there will be a point where you will painfully realize that you need to have true customer insight in-house.
How can you avoid dependence?
Easy as it sounds, you need to invest time and resources into talking to your customers, understanding your current and potential target groups from day 1. If you don’t you become so dependent that one day you might not be able to steer the wheel of your ship against the tidal waves of competition, changing purchasing behavior and your own growth.
Three rules to keep in mind:
- Build a customer centric company, where every employee knows your target groups and is aware of their desires and challenges. This will support them in their day-to-day work.
- Build a well-structured database, collect customer data at every touchpoint and make really good use of it. Give access to everyone in the company.
- Invest in market research with companies that know what they are doing, do focus groups, meet customers, understand their motivations and challenges.
And keep in mind: use Facebook to its fullest potential, but don’t be tricked, just because you reach your customers successfully. It doesn’t mean that you know who they are.
