Marketing Pilgrim

With the Super Bowl being this weekend and the fact that two major metro teams, the New York Giants and the New England Patriots, are participating there is A LOT of press coverage. Usually the Super Bowl hype is overbearing but even to this sports fan (and New York Giants fan) this one is getting a bit ridiculous.

One reason is social media. I decided to follow a few athletes just to see what they might say. I usually don’t do this for two reasons:

1. I like the games. The rest of the “stuff” that goes with it I can live without.
2. I don’t want to know too much about the players

“By 2017, Millennials – those consumers now in their mid-teens to mid-30s – will have more spending power than any other generation.”

That quote shouldn’t take you by surprise. It’s the circle of life. A new crop of young, working, educated men and women who have discretionary income. In other words, the people you need to keep your business alive.

One hitch, a study by Bazaarvoice says that Millennials don’t make purchase decisions like their mothers did, not even like their big sisters did! Since Millennials are growing up in the social media age, they rely on the opinions of others more than any other group before them.

We all know by now that Facebook has filed the paperwork for their IPO. If you want to learn who is getting rich and by how much there are myriad blogs etc that will give you that information. I have read a few of these and the takeaway from them all? Zuckerberg is stupid rich while Sheryl Sandberg is “busting through the glass ceiling” and brings home the bacon for her home in a big way. There, I just saved you a toe of time!

What is most interesting is a list of 35 business concerns or threats that Facebook states could throw a monkey wrench into their money printing operation. They include mobile as a weak spot in the business and Zynga being responsible for 12% of the revenue of Facebook. But here is the one that I see as simply a preemptive strike against Congress looking at Facebook as the Google of the social world. It reads like this.

In an ideal Facebook marketing world, fans would like our pages, leave sweet comments on our amusing daily updates, and share their joy with their friends.

In the real world, it doesn’t work that way. You already knew that, but did you know how much it doesn’t work that way?

AdAge recently published the results of a study by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and here’s what they found.

1.3% of brand fans on Facebook are actively engaging with the brands they like. (Meaning I fudged the 99% in the headline slightly, but it’s more about the point than the number.) The study tracked the top 200 brands for six weeks, counting all of those actions that go into the “People Talking About This” number. That means shares, likes, comments, posts and tags.

We’ve been saying the same thing for a while now. Everyone knows social media marketing is good for business, but no one has a surefire method for quantifying the results.

To get around this, most marketers make themselves feel better by saying that social media marketing is primarily about brand awareness. This is true and important. Having your name out there is better than not, but awareness alone doesn’t pay the bills. That awareness needs to convert into sales and that’s the problem. Not the “getting sales” part but the “measuring sales” part.

Wildfire just put together a new infographic on this very topic. You can see the whole graphic when you click here. I’d like to focus on one part.

Imagine a movie based on your life. Would it be a blockbuster adventure? A romantic comedy? Hopefully not fodder for a Lifetime Original.

Oh forget imagining, Facebook wants to make it so, with the Timeline Movie Maker. Opt in, click a few choices and you’ll have a mini movie showing the best years of your life set to music. As long as you documented those years on Facebook, of course.

AdAge thinks Facebook is using the movie maker to make Timeline “less fearsome.” Personally, I think it makes it even worse.

These functions are terrific if you have cool list of adventures on your Facebook. For the rest of us, not so much. Seriously, I don’t even want to look at mine. It’s like watching your life flash before your eyes and the most exciting thing on there is the trip you took to Disneyland ten years ago.

At the All Things D’s, D: Dive Into Media event, Twitter’s CEO Dick Costolo was interviewed by Peter Kafka. He touches on Google, China, political ads, IPO’s and more. Of course, he has to say that 2012 is going to be the year of a Twitter election. Not too arrogant but hey who am I to argue? Oh and shockingly, Kara Swisher gets involved.

All kidding aside, thanks to AllThingsD for getting Mr. Costolo to avoid some questions (read: choose not to answer) just to make things interesting!

Any thoughts?

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