Just when you think Facebook can do nothing more in its quest of world domination, there comes news from London that Facebook may make company websites obsolete.
That was the Nostradamus-like prophecy given by Stephen Haines, the commercial director of Facebook's European operation during a speech at the Technology for Marketing and Advertising conference. Haines’ premise is simple, a company’s customers would spend so much time on Facebook that traditional Web sites would literally dry up from lack of use.
As proof of his theory, Haines compared how many times per month Facebook users clicked on a company's "like" button verses how many times people visited several popular company’s Web site. For instance, at Starbucks, one of Facebook’s largest advertisers, 21.1 million clicked “like” compared to 1.8 million site visitors. For Coca-Cola, it was 20.5 million compared with 270,000 (did you get that? 20.5 million vs. 270,000!!!). Oreo's facebook page had 10.1 million "likes" compared to 290,000 site visits and for Dr. Pepper, it was 4.1 million likes compared with 325,000 site visits. Then, as the coup de grâce, Hines shared that in the U.K., millions of Facebook users spend an average of 28 minutes per day on the site.
Suddenly, Haines’ ramblings begin to make sense.
His idea isn't totally outrageous. Getting a customer to press that “like” button is easier than building a comprehensive website from scratch. More importantly, Facebook allows a company to tap into an established communication channel and a treasure chest of customer information. Plus, there's no need to ask, request or bribe a user to set up another account with another username and password.
Best of all, Facebook has a variety of tools available to marketers:
- Facebook can tell companies exactly who are the "22-year-olds in New York City who like football and espresso."
- A company can give coupons or even free samples from their page.
- "Reach block" ads that change as many as five times in a 24-hour period to send a sequence of ad messages to Facebook users.
- Surveys that let companies try to engage customers in company decisions. For example, Vitaminwater used voting and surveys to generate 1.3 million "connections" with possible customers during its "find a new flavor" marketing campaign.
- Best of all, there are now more than a few applications that let companies create custom-made interactive programs.
Regardless of the extent to which Facebook actually replaces in-house Web sites, Facebook as a marketing channel isn't for everybody. In fact, there are dangers that could make the Facebook journey a bit ominous. To start with, companies (and antitrust regulators) get nervous when one corporation holds all the cards. There's also the possibility that Facebook users might someday get cold feet. What would happen if Facebook became the next MySpace? Imagine is Facebook wasn’t cool?
Finally, Haines closed out his session with cautions for those thinking of using Facebook seriously in this way.
First, be prepared for a long-term commitment to keep a site on Facebook lively. "If it doesn't change, it's probably not worth dabbling" with a Facebook site, Haines said. For a social-networking site to be useful in marketing, it's got to "stimulate" the customers, he said.
Second, plan to respond to very public criticism. "If you ignore [criticism], it's the worst thing you can do," he said. "Be prepared for it, because it will happen."