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Comment RSSPetFlow Founder Says Brands Don’t Know Facebook
Written by Alex ZhardanovskyFebruary 5, 2012 # 4:58 pm # Expert Guides, Specials # 9 Comments
Not too long ago, Performance Marketing Insider wrote a post based on a study by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science that Facebook fans are basically worthless, citing that for the top 200 brands on Facebook, the engagement of their users is only 1.2%, meaning that 99% of their fans are completely useless and add no value to the brand. This “study,” however, is completely baseless and it’s results are completely inaccurate. The results of the study should actually read – “The top 200 brands on Facebook are completely clueless about what to do with their audience and have no clue about how to engage their audience.”
Now, I don’t claim to be any kind of “social media guru” by any stretch of the imagination, but it would seem to me, that if you spend your hard earned cash earning the likes of hundreds of thousands of “fans,” then you should also spend a little bit of your resources turning this audience into a valuable resource. It’s just common sense. If you’re standing on a podium in front of a thousand people that came to hear what you have to say, shouldn’t you say something, interesting?
I’m the co-founder of a company called PetFlow.com, an online retailer of pet food. We have over 300,000 fans on Facebook on our fanpage at http://www.facebook.com/petflow. We certainly don’t have 300,000 customers yet, however, we constantly advertise to build our fanbase. For us, our fan page has been both a great source of ideas, a place where our existing customers can share their experiences with potential customers, as well as a place where we constantly generate new customers for our business.
How? We engage our audience! If those top 200 brands only had 1.2% engagement from their users, look at ours:
Over 20% of our users have interacted with us in some way in the last week, by commenting on a photo of a cute animal that we post, by commenting on a question that we’ve asked, or by participating in some sort of promotion. Every single day, we post about 8-10 times and ask our fans to comment on our posts, like them, and express their opinion, and they do! We also hold many contests on our fan page, asking users to jump onto our site at www.PetFlow.com, find a product that they like, and post a link to that product in a response – and we then pick a winner of the contest, and give them $20-$30 worth of products for free. But guess what? After thousands of people visit our site and see our prices by browsing products – we get customers!
Just last week, we introducing a new homepage, and prior to launching this homepage, we asked our 300,000+ fans for their comments on it, and got invaluable feedback. We gave no prizes for giving feedback – people genuinely care, and if they’re engaged, they’ll support your brand.
So, to make a long story short, just because some “insititue” does a “study,” it doesn’t make it true. Facebook fans are most certainly not “worthless,” and if any of the top 200 brands need advice on how to engage their audience, please don’t ask me – but head on over to www.facebook.com/petflow and see what we do.
Oh, and buy some food for your cats and dogs too, just visit www.PetFlow.com – I spent time writing this, at least you can buy something.
Back to selling dog food!
Written by Alex Zhardanovsky
Alex Zhardanovsky is the co-founder of PetFlow.com the largest online pet food store, and before that the co-founder of Epic Media Group aka Azoogle.
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I think that this sites can be much useful for all pet owners. They will definitely find there much useful for them information
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Well, I quite agree on Amanda’s thought. these sites can give pet owners much helpful information
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i totally agree with you…..just because an “insititue” does a “study,” it doesn’t make it true. off now to check out your http://www.facebook.com/petflow
Actually observation is right. I have personally noticed that the Facebook fans are not essentially that are interested in your product or I may say that they are not niche based traffic. When i post something interesting, I get many likes and they are not of any use to me…
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Hi,
You are right on. Once you develop trust your customers will buy from you and if you deliver quality products at a fair price, they will spread the word for your products.
Thanks,
Jim
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I agree with this, trust your costumer and take care with them because in our job their are boss, we must do all of their want to do..
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Excellent information there Alex.
Pet owners are one of the most loyal and active social groups online, so it’s not surprising you get that sort of response, but multi-channel interaction between web site > Facebook Page > web site > Twitter account > Flickr > YouTube so few companies do it correctly.
Far too few true social media experts understand brand building.
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The reason that so many brands are struggling with converting fans to actual activity and sales is that they don’t really get social media. Too many companies are of the mindset that all they really have to do to succeed is set up a Facebook page, throw a few bucks into Facebook ads, maybe use one of the types of companies at BuyFacebookFansReviews and that will just automatically catapult them to success. Things don’t work out that way online. They have to be able to offer something to people that they value and listen to their customers. This is the best way to achieve long-term success. I think PetFlow is getting great results because they’re actually going out of their way to offer things to people that they value. Also pictures of cute animals are always viral online, so good for them for taking advantage of that fact and using it to their advantage. The additional factor here is that while Facebook offers features to increase engagement, those features are really only designed to increase engagement on Facebook pages themselves. You have to go out and offer people something of value on Facebook to really find a way to get success.
HI Admin Nice to be back in your site, I’ve encounter a big mistake with this, because my applicant they dont trust me about their going to do with their client and the client try to quit with us.. that’s why we must always take care with our client…
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