What’s The Value of a Facebook Like?

The Facebook Like, is often dismissed as little more than a Facebook Marketing vanity metric by many in the social media marketing world. I get it, it’s so easy to Like something. It doesn’t take a lot of effort, so how valuable is a Facebook Like really in terms of brand building, lead generation and sales conversions? As it turns out, pretty darn valuable.

Facebook Likes = Guaranteed Brand Interaction

At a minimum, a Facebook Like is an oft used KPI. For many though it’s little more than a vanity metric. But what many lose sight of is the deeper value of a Like. It’s a Guaranteed Brand Interaction (GBI), which unlike traditional advertising metrics like Reach and Gross Rating Points (GRPs), which are little more than opportunities to make a brand impression, a GBI is a confirmed brand impression.

So at a dead minimum, a Facebook Like is the online equivalent of customer or prospective customer meeting your brand and saying hi.

Facebook Likes = Opportunity To Talk For Free

Now here I’m talking specifically about when someone Likes your Post or Ad, but doesn’t currently Like your Facebook Page. Facebook not only shows you who these people are, but gives you the opportunity to invite them to Like your Page.

If they do, and many do, you now have the opportunity to talk to them (well approximately 6% of them at last count) for free, since people who Like your Page theoretically see your posts whether or not you boost them. But even if they won’t see all of your posts for free, many will like your Page, which creates a bigger Facebook Analytics data pool to help you understand who your customers and prospective customers are on Facebook.

Facebook Likes = Identification

Once someone Likes your Page, you can actually see who they are as a person. At a minimum you can see a picture of them (avatar), which often times contains tons of unstructured but important information and insights.

And for those Likes that don’t have their Facebook Profiles locked down privacy wise, you can dive deeper and perform a little Social Recon to uncover an even clearer picture of your Likes to better plan content, marketing and sales efforts.

For instance, with one client we discovered a sub-group of hispanic surnames were Liking the Page at a higher rate than non-hispanics. We began to monitor and sure enough, we were seeing a real growth in hispanic males Liking the Page even though we weren’t doing anything to appeal to those folks.

When we told the client, they began cross referencing sales data. Once they did, little pockets of sales clusters appeared in, you guessed it, hispanic dense cities in Texas.

We then coordinated with the local sales force to create and deliver a hispanic focused campaign targeting hispanic dominant cities in Texas to further support targeted sales efforts creating an impactful one-two online/offline punch.

And all of this effort started because we noticed a bunch of hispanic surnames in our new Facebook Likes.

Facebook Likes = Grow Non-Facebook Relationships

Once you know the identity of a new Facebook Like, you can leverage that information to discover and build relationships with your new Likes on non-Facebook platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and more to increase your chances of creating Propinquity against these new Likes.

Using platforms like Nimble, you can enter someone’s Facebook Profile URL and the platform will attempt to locate that person on the primary social media platforms: Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google+ (yes, that’s still a thing).

If you’re a B2B company, this means you can leverage Facebook to begin populating a CRM of sales prospects and uncover their digital footprint. Once discovered, you can then begin to engage with them on these other footprints too, both increasing your Propinquity and lessening your dependency on Facebook for the relationship.

Understanding The Value of a Facebook Like

While it’s easy to dismiss the value of a Facebook Like as insignificant since people often give very little thought to Liking stuff on Facebook, don’t.

A Facebook Like is the beginning of an information journey that will make you a better marketer and a more successful salesperson.