The Facebook Marketing Lifecycle

Page optimization through actionable data

August 3, 2012

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Introduction
For marketers, one of the most powerful aspects of Facebook is the ability to precisely measure
each stage of how content is consumed and shared - whereas even sophisticated digital marketing
of the past decade has often relied on estimation and imprecise audience tracking, Facebooks value proposition to marketers and advertisers is precision in targeting and measurement.
Facebook is still a relatively young company though, and the industry of Facebook marketing even
younger - to many agencies and brands, the dynamics of engagement on Facebook look like an
overwhelming flurry of activity, and success looks like a stroke of luck.
There is, however, a distinct and measurable lifecycle to how content reaches fans of Facebook Pages, is amplified by paid spend and viral reach, and defines and grows a Pages audience.
At PageLever, weve seen our brand and agency customers reach millions more consumers
by measuring and understanding this lifecycle.
Too often obscured by the vanity metrics of Page Likes and audience growth, Pages that optimize
for the content lifecycle on Facebook reach 2x, 3x or even 4x more of their audience organically
than the average Page. The equivalent spend, in terms of Facebook Ads, that would be necessary to
reach that same audience reaches into six or even seven figures for large Pages. The incentives to
optimize both content and timing are at an all-time high, and the first step towards optimization is
to understand the lifecycle of Facebook Pages.

For Facebook Pages, success is measured in cycles, rather than the short burst campaigns
that have dominated marketing in the past.
Weve defined four distinct stages of this cycle - audience, visibility, engagement and growth. Each
stage directly depends on the one before it - there can be no engagement without visibility, because
content has to be seen before it can be consumed and shared. An outstanding marketing team
uses data to determine the weakest stages first, because they understand that the success of their
Page hinges upon full circle execution.

The Facebook Marketing Lifecycle

1

What percentage of our fans

on Facebook are within our
target demographics?

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How can we optimize both

content and paid spend to
ensure that our message
reaches our target audience
as frequently as possible?

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Engagement
Is our content shareable,
such that it drives our target
audience to share it with
their friends?

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Visibility

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Audience

Growth
Where is our growth coming
from? Ads, viral reach,
website referrals? Is this
growth within our target
audience?

Audience
Every brand has at least one target audience for their products, defined most clearly by
demographic, geographic and interest data. While the parameters of this audience are well defined,
overall size is usually at best an estimate.
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By contrast, a brands audience on Facebook can be clearly measured by the number of people who
like their Page(s). This leads many to assume that, because fans opted-in to liking the Page, they are
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potential customers and part of the target audience.
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Weve found that for most brands, there is a discrepancy between target audience
and Facebook

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audience. There are two primary causes:

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When Pages post content, it only reaches a subset of their audience, so these unqualified fans are
essentially taking up space and wasting valuable impressions - instead of reaching the target
audience, the brands message reaches people who will never convert.

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Inactivity or perverse incentive structure. Lets face it, reaching a brands target audience,
that actually converts into paying customers, is challenging. The more expensive the product,
the bigger the challenge. Many companies that under-invested in Facebook Pages, particularly
in 2009 and 2010, attracted millions of fans outside their target demographic - from aspirational
window-shoppers to kids who liked Pages to enter their free iPad giveaway.

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Poorly targeted paid spend. Over the past three years, many brands and agencies have, either
themselves or through 3rd-parties, spent money on Sponsored Stories to acquire new Likes, in
an attempt to appear large and successful to competitors, clients and bosses. Often referred to
as unqualified likes, many of the fans acquired through these campaigns are outside of the
Pages target audience, sometimes in emerging countries where the company does no business.

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Instead of just looking at audience growth in terms of likes, we encourage our customers to useR C H
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demographics to compare their Facebook audience against their target audience, and set goals
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for growth only within the target. After all, for a company selling luxury icars,
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Indonesia wont drive growth, but reaching just 3% more middle-aged fans in the USA could make a
big impact.

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Visibility
Three primary components determine the reach of a Pages content:
Organic Distribution. Only a percentage of a Facebook Pages fans see any given post
organically, but not only can this percentage can vary greatly, it can be dramatically increased
by understanding how it is calculated. Facebook uses relevancy algorithms to determine what
content appears in a given users News Feed. Often referred to as Edgerank, these algorithms
score content based on the users affinity and previous interactions with the Page - comments,
likes, shares andM clicks.

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Paid Spend (Facebook Ads). At PageLever, we believe the most effective use of paid spend is
amplification of page posts and Sponsored Stories. Lets say were looking at Mercedes Benz
Facebook Page - fans in affluent zip codes, age 40-60, are 10x, maybe even 100x more valuable
to the company than the rest of their fans. By using paid spend to amplify reach, Pages can
ensure that their content is seen by their most valuable fans.
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Overtime, if a Page consistently succeeds at driving their target audience to engage through these
three channels, Facebook displays a higher percentage of that Pages content organically. Put
simply, Facebook incentivizes great content.
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Facebook incentivizes great content, but the but defining great content requires detailed
analytics - for example, one of our customers, MTV India, discovered that when they posted photos
as albums, instead of individually, over 1200% more people clicked on them, causing Facebook
to show their content to a greater percentage of their audience. In a competitive landscape,
discoveries like this, driven by analytics, represent massive competitive advantages.

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Viral Reach. When a Facebook user sees a story about a friend liking, commenting or sharing
a Pages content, this counts as Viral Reach - the number of unique people who saw the Pages
content through a story published by a friend. Viral Reach represents the snowball effect that
sticky, sharable content has, and is one of the strongest signals of successful content

Engagement
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Its easy to create and curate content that your audience will consume, but clicks and views dont
generate stories on Facebook - only when a user is engaged enough to like, comment or share
content are stories generated in the users friends News Feeds, and in the lifecycle of content on
Facebook, the viral reach from stories is a key driver of organic growth.
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At its core, driving engagement is about optimizing content for user action, and this requires
community managers to shift away from asking, Is this interesting to our audience? and start
asking questions like, Will this video drive our audience to share with their friends?

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For many Pages, there are clear, measurable signals that their content is being consumed,Vbut few
stories are being generates through comments, likes and shares. Then, seemingly
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posts will take off and are shared hundreds of times. How do you use data to determine why that
particular post drove more engagement than the past 10 combined?

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Test, analyze, optimize. As a startup, we follow a fast build, measure, learn cycle ourselves,
and its our goal to enable our customers to do the same with the Facebook Pages theyre
responsible for. We believe in marketing based on the scientific method - create a hypothesis,
test it, measure results, and optimize content accordingly.

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Take the guesswork out of content development. Facebook has become too important
a marketing channel to allow Community Managers to operate on instincts alone. Managers
and directors need data too - clear and meaningful analytics are critical to assessing the
performance of Community Managers.

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Can you identify not only which individual pieces of content perform best, but which types of
content, or subject matters generate the most stories? All marketers should be measuring which
content drives the most engagement, and adapt their content strategy accordingly.

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Growth
Instinctually, many of us are wired to look to growth as the first and only metric for Facebook Pages.
Nearly everyone involved in social media marketing is under pressure for more likes from clients,
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Where is our growth coming from? For most Pages, the majority of new fans do not come
from the Timeline - they come from stories that appear in users News Feeds or Ticker. For brands
with a strong web presence or blog, a significant number of likes may come from the Like Box or
button.

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Is this growth within our target audience? Growth feels great, but its only meaningful to a
business if the new fans might convert and become customers. Breaking down growth by age,
gender and location leads to a better understanding of growth quality.

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Where are the surprises in the demographics of audience growth? Weve seen our
customers make all kinds of interesting discoveries, like finding latent demand for their product
in a country halfway around the world, all by looking at demographic data and asking, why do
so many people in this country like our Page?
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When executed well, over time this lifecycle compounds - with a larger audience comes increased
reach, with increased reach comes more engagement, with engagement comes growth, and with
E N G growth comes
A G E M E N T a larger audience. Whether youre on the brand, agency or consultant side, youre
probably already seeing this cycle in action to some degree. At PageLever, we think great analytics
can accelerate and refine this cycle by helping individuals and teams understand what works, so
they can create better, more targeted content.
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Smart marketers and leaders know that growth is only one of many metrics, and our smartest
customers,
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A U D Igrowth,
asking questions like:

Summary
The terminology around Facebook marketing is new and different. Instead of impressions
and clicks, words like reach, stories and consumptions take center stage. While they sound
similar, it is essential to understand these definitions and develop a vocabulary for talking
about Facebook Pages.
Facebook marketing is based on a lifecycle that is always on. Whereas digital marketing
is based on campaigns that last a specific period of time, Facebook marketing is best
understood as a lifecycle where consistent content and optimization drives growth,
engagement and reach within a target audience. When executed well, the impact of
Facebook Pages is far greater than any single campaign can deliver.
Set goals for each stage of the lifecycle. Drive your team to focus on measurable
achievements, rather than intuition or generic engagement. The most important stage to
focus on should be the one where you are currently weakest, because it is a roadblock for
each of the other stages in the lifecycle.
Full circle measurement is essential. The impact of a Facebook Page is far greater than
simply the sum of its posts, or its total number of likes. Many brands and agencies still use
tools that only measure one or two stages of the lifecycle - maybe you already measure
growth & engagement, but not reach or audience. The most successful Pages measure all
four stages.

About PageLever
PageLever is the worlds leading analytics solution for Facebook Pages.
With customers ranging from Fortune 500 companies to digital agencies to boutique consultants, thousands of
Facebook Pages rely on PageLever Analytics to measure, analyze and optimize their marketing.
We believe in actionable analytics, where content is driven by data, and a future where marketing is personalized, targeted, and directly measured. Were excited to be part of this future, and are dedicated to providing
our customers with elegant solutions that help them achieve meaningful results.
Founded in 2010, PageLever is built for and by social media marketers. Before PageLever, members of our team
led strategy and optimized some of the largest Pages on Facebook - we know what its like to be in your shoes.

Contact
Jesse Channon
VP, Business Development
jesse@pagelever.com
(202) 596-5803

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