Facebook Marketing Trends

I attended the excellent AllFacebook Marketing Conference in London on November 19th.  Here are some things I took away.

Facebook offers definite opportunities for brands but even big brands are being challenged

BBC Worldwide has 27m likes across its brands with TopGear social media having a social attribute of nearly £1m. It suffered a reach decline in a single quarter from 38% to 14% after Facebook EdgeRank changes, costing more than £9k per day.

With EdgeRank changes, it is clear that brands need to be agile, diversifying traffic sources and changing interaction.  For example,BBC Worldwide moving to more G+, Pinterest, Instagram, Peer To Peer interaction, and more live events

It is now more difficult for brands to obtain reach

Facebook's EdgeRank changes make it more difficult to reach users on the newsfeed.

Brands are essentially competing against user friends, not other brands.  They are penalised if they take users out of FB environment.

Therefore brands need to reach within FB platform but outside of news feed e.g. Apps are very much the way to go.

More opportunities for brands to engage

It is not all bad news. The Edgerank changes give more opportunities for brands to reach users with greater brand affinity, enabling more engagement rather than consumption.

Video, photo,status, and micro aspects of each (e.g. photo color, status length, timing) can dramatically affect engagement.  

Geotargetting offers potential for targeted diversification

This allows brands to filter who they post to based on demographics.  Impact of this is being able to maintain a centralised Facebook channel while segmenting message - Dear fans in Australia etc.While only in North America at present, it should be rolled out further.

10 talks about the beauty — and difficulty — of being creative

10 talks about the beauty — and difficulty — of being creative

Amazon. Selling Well.

It shouldn't work but it does. All too well.

Amazon's site breaks the rules.

Crowded over heavy navigation width and long funnels to purchase; key product information out of view and requiring extra customer effort; product recommendation that lacks sophistication and referral power.

But I know that when I visit the site they will almost always have what I need. And I will be ready to purchase there and then. It's the zero moment of truth and all helped along by one-click purchasing.

So here's something for Amazon. I know what I want before I arrive on your site. I have trust in your sales and delivery process. I know I will find it on your site cheaper than most other sources, online and offline. So give me two just two minimal features. Smart semantic personalized search and a simple immediate purchase button. That's all I need. Bare bones ecommerce, working well.