{"id":1939,"date":"2017-04-11T20:30:26","date_gmt":"2017-04-11T15:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ravi.rajiniravi.com\/blog\/?p=1939"},"modified":"2017-04-11T14:38:22","modified_gmt":"2017-04-11T09:08:22","slug":"the-value-of-a-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ravi.rajiniravi.com\/blog\/2017\/04\/the-value-of-a-like\/","title":{"rendered":"The value of a like"},"content":{"rendered":"

From my previous employment, one quote on social media marketing, especially like \/ fan \/ follower acquisition strategy has stuck in my head. A colleague once said, \u201cIf all those who liked my brand\u2019s page on Facebook, bought the product once, my business plan for the year is done!\u201d<\/p>\n

This quote came back to my mind instantly, when I read two articles on HBR recently \u2013 the first one is about calculating the value of a like<\/a>, gives an elaborate formula for value of a like<\/a> (VOAL). Which tries to calculate how much you spent in getting a customer by spending to acquire a fan. It loosely bases the calculation on selecting conversion\u2019 as either average sale price or average lead value. The second one, the value of a like<\/a> (different article), is a very interesting summary of 23 experiments done over four years involving more than 18,000 people.\u00a0 It presents 3 interesting conclusions of these studies and adds a 4th to state how one can better leverage this like.<\/p>\n

But first, going back to my point on achieving the business plan, tucked away in the conclusion of the second article are 2 startling statistics from different surveys, in one survey of 427 marketers from U.S. companies, they found \u201880% unable to quantify the value of their social media efforts\u2019 and in another study done among CMOs of Fortune<\/span> 500 companies, they found that \u201887% acknowledged that they can\u2019t document that social media creates new customers\u2019.<\/p>\n

While marketers are still figuring out what is the value of a like, the argument for chasing social media followers still is of course about increasing sales. That increased sales might be because of higher frequency of purchase or higher value of purchase.\u00a0 Both classical communication behaviour objectives\u00a0(some might argue the later is not) that a marketer strives for through via his communication efforts. Now both of them shouldn\u2019t be confused with a like being from \u2018those who already have positive feelings towards a brand\u2019 and hence more likely to spend and\/or transact more.<\/p>\n

Anyways, the interesting summary from these studies\u2026<\/p>\n