07 Nov Should you still invest in growing Facebook Likes?

I never really believe in Facebook Likes (fans, I mean)., because they can be easily bought with money. Overtime, the number is meaningless if you don’t know how to capitalize on it.

We believe in converting those fans into useful database such as email addresses, phone numbers, etc. by running Facebook app supported campaigns. The strategy is always about spending on advertising to lure visits to the app – fan-gating app mostly – then entice them to like the page to participate. As frictionless as possible we know, but at least to get them to like, and grant us access to get their basic info. If one day everything were to go wrong, you still have the customer database.

But fan-gating is not allowed anymore. Now this is bad.

We’ve heard marketers ranting that Facebook is getting too commercialized where profit is their only goal now. I mean, who in the world will not think about maximizing profit? Get real, guys. This is Facebook, Mark needs to answer to shareholders.

Now back to the question: Should you still invest in growing Facebook Likes? Yes you should.

Reasons:

1. Better sampling – The bigger your fan base is, the more legitimate the respond. You may test your messaging and visuals with your current fan base before boosting it to non-fans.
2. Validating ideas – I usually validate my marketing ideas with existing fans. Even by advertising, it is cheaper to reach to fans than non-fans, so it makes perfect sense to grow to a sizable fan base.
3. More reach – According to research you can reach fans 4 times a day, but only 2 times for non-fans. That’s provided you’re advertising with multiple variations.
4. Lookalike audience – One of the most useful tools ever by Facebook. Based on my recent experiment, with over 1,000 fans I’m able to create a lookalike audience of over 2million in a country. Advertising on this audience reduced my cost-per-like by almost half.

Another important tool by Facebook is Custom Audience. Provided you have gotten the consensus from your audience when getting their email address or best till, Facebook ID. You can now create custom audience base on these information to reach them, and their friends, of course. We’re still experimenting with custom audience, will share more when we have them.