Fan pages increase loyalty but can be time consuming, says Duncan Southgate, global brand director for digital at research firm Millward Brown

Last week I saw the film Source Code at the cinema and posted about it on Facebook. Within minutes a sponsored link for the movie’s fan page appeared, and because I liked the movie, I “liked” the fan page. At the time of writing, over 100,000 other Facebook users have also become fans. But once we’ve been recruited, what exactly are we fans really worth to the brands that try to engage us on Facebook?

What do brands gain from having fans on Facebook?

Millward Brown and online research company Dynamic Logic, in co-operation with the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), recently researched what people around the world gain by becoming fans of brands on social media sites and what global marketers, PR and social media practitioners expect to get in return.

Of the marketers who took part in the research revealed, 85 per cent regard fan pages as a means of securing additional insight and increasing loyalty, while 80 per cent cited the opportunity to increase advocacy. This is generally more important than trying to drive a direct sales response.

Of the marketers who took part in this research, 96 per cent are spending more on social media and 27 per cent are finding that running fan pages takes more time and money than anticipated.

Despite the increase in time and money being invested, 50 per cent of the marketers who participated had previously been unsure of their return on investment: 23 per cent thought they were getting a good return, but 27 per cent regarded payback as just average or poor. The new measurement approach used in this research provided fresh insight to help with this ROI dilemma.

The value of a fan:

The Value of a Fan research shows that there are five basic attributes that fans expect from the fan pages of their favourite brands:

1. regular posts

2. trustworthy brand news

3. new product information

4. contests

5. special offers

Those brand pages that can also offer a sense of fun, variety, innovation, interactivity or community tend to stand out from the crowd and see a stronger response from their fans including improved engagement and a deepening of brand equity.

Marketers that don’t regularly add new and interesting content to their fan pages and embrace what their fans want from the page are missing out on an opportunity to build loyalty among some of their most important consumers. Once fans are recruited, the most popular content formats to keep them engaged are: videos, contests, new product information, conversation and photos.

For example, through conversations on the Source Code fan page I’ve learned that other fans shared my opinion that it’s “like Inception but simpler”. As a result, that’s precisely how I’ve described the film when recommending it to friends. There’s clearly value to be generated from fan pages (for both fans and marketers), as long as brands truly understand how and why their pages are working well.

Methodology

Value of a Fan is based on interviews with 24 multinationals in the WFA membership and online questionnaires with 3,687 of their fans. The fan pages selected included brands from the confectionery, alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, personal care and telecommunications sectors. Although some pages were global, others were specifically targeted at consumers in Australia, France, Germany, Sweden, the UK or the US.