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24/02/2013 by
6470 views

Facebook Going Beyond The Like With Social NPS?

Is Facebook finally going ‘beyond the like’ with Social NPS? Well NPS, that could be the bridge we all needed so badly.

Facebook Going Beyond The Like With Social NPS?

Buying likes on Facebook? That is what every brand with a budget can do. But does it add any value to the brand and business objectives?

Or is having ‘the biggest’ just an ego booster for the CEO and CMO on the golf course?

Industry experts (not self-proclaimed social gurus) know that still many digital / social managers get this message from their CMO: “Shut up, just buy me the likes.”

Sad thing about that? Most paid-for-likes are not even customers at that brand. So how can they ever recommend that brand or their products?!

The one and only really relevant question was and is: Would you recommend our company to a friend?

That answer is not the number of Facebook likes you have bought, or bribed with an iPad.

The truth lies in the good old Net Promoter Score or NPS.

How to Calculate Your NPS Score?

Most large brands have used NPS for years. Isn’t it time for social and tech companies to understand NPS too?

NPS is based on the fundamental perspective that every company’s customers can be divided into three categories: Promoters, Passives, and Detractors.

By asking one simple question — How likely is it that you would recommend Brand X to a friend or colleague? — You can track these groups and get a clear measure of your company’s performance through its customers’ eyes.

Customers respond on a 0-to-9 point rating scale and are categorized as follows:

Promoters (score 8-9) are loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying and refer others, fueling growth.
Passives (score 6-7) are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who are vulnerable to competitive offerings.
Detractors(score 0-5) are unhappy customers who can damage your brand and impede growth through negative word-of-mouth.

To calculate your company’s Net Promoter Score (NPS), take the percentage of customers who are Promoters and subtract the percentage who are Detractors.

Facebook Going Beyond The Like With Social NPS?

Brands and the Social NPS

Let’s assume for a moment that we’d think straight, a day without the overhyped social media fever. On that day, what would you really like to know from your social audience?

Now I know that many brands love cool social media monitoring tools. Some even created a NASA alike Mission Control room Radian6.

Gatorade released this video in 2010, showing their Mission Control room:

YouTube Preview Image

Dell and a few other large brands next also showed us their Control rooms. Look at how cool we are!

Always Listen First approach?

An Always Listen First strategy is certainly wise for brands. In regular and in social marketing programs. Why?

Because too many brands did forget about ALF and jumped into social media, without doing that crucial MRI scan first.

In the 10 years being a digital strategist for really large brands, I’ve seen the bulk starting to open social channels like race dogs on steroids.

Mostly just based on the reach of these social channels, calculated by their media agency.

Mostly not knowing anything about the sentiment around their products or brands.

Mostly not being aware of actionable insights that could have been derived from an ALF strategy or upfront MRI scan.

Our social approach was mostly similar to old skool advertising: reaching a broad target audience with intrusive ads and banners. Wow, really social, right?

Would you jump into social channels if your Social NPS told you: Warning, many Detractors and Passives at the moment?

No sane person
on this planet would ignore the red flag shark alert, right? Oh f*ck it; I am going for a nice long swim in the sea!

Except for so many brand managers and CMOs.

Social Monitoring compared to NPS?

I do love some social monitoring tools. But I never understood the fact that most lacked any sort of NPS benchmark.

NPS was already embraced and accepted by so many of brands, way before social media became a phenomenon.

So to the social monitoring tool vendors: Why not think a bit more NPS?

Comparing your social monitoring dashboards to NPS, that would have been smooth and easy for many CMOs. A simple link in your dashboard that would say: Now benchmark your results with NPS.

Why does our industry keep reinventing the wheel over and over again? Is “newer” always better? Or is proven and what we already know (and trust) sometimes the fastest way forward?

Why don’t the tool vendors practice ALF, before developing their technologies, dashboards and notification systems?

By applying semantic network analysis to promoters, detractors and passives, we can better understand what should be measured in addition to the likely to recommend question.

By measuring the appropriate key drivers with an attribute question in your NPS program, you will be providing your field management with an immediate path of action to improve their NPS.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) has become well established in most industry sectors as a methodology for tracking customer advocacy as well as providing a benchmark score within each sector.

To date most businesses have only focused on the score itself and know “what” their score is and how it changes over time but have little, if any, insight on “why” it is improving or deteriorating.

The problem that social media monitoring tool providers and social media marketing agencies will encounter from brands is this: “Your data, analytics and insights are not to be compared with our NPS score, so we cannot benchmark towards our competition either.

Basically, social monitoring output might not be matching with NPS. Social agencies call the top of the food chain: Influencers, opinion leaders, fans or followers. NPS calls them: Promotors.

So can we finally build bridges?

Looks like it now.

Facebook Embracing Social NPS?

It looks like Facebook will finally embrace NPS. At least, LoudDoor, a Facebook research and targeting firm, announced this week the launch of Brand Satisfaction in beta.

Marketers for major brands can see what their Facebook fans really think of them, going beyond simply likes, comments, and shares.

The basic metric that Brand Satisfaction works with is the question, “Would you recommend us to your friends?”

From there, it shows the percentage of those who would not, those who were unsure, and those who would. See the video demo here:

YouTube Preview Image

However, it allows users to go a little deeper, measuring the detractors, the passives, and the promoters by the demographics of gender, age, household income, education, relationship status, children, and credit ranking.

Marketers can also see these statistics based on purchasing behavior, as well as the motivation to like a Facebook page or buy something.

For instance, marketers can see, of people who spend lots of money going to the movies or who have good credit scores, how many would be likely to recommend the brand.

My Opinion?
I believe that NPS could be the foundation for Social NPS.

But important is the context in Social NPS. So understand that NPS is based on existing customers. The ones that are really using your products or services.

Social NPS is mostly based on fans and followers that many brands have generated by paid-for “like” campaigns. So how to calculate Social NPS if your fans / followers are not truly your customers?

I do hope that the world of PR, Media, Tech and Social are finally going to integrate their ideas and outputs. NPS or Social NPS could be an epic center. Or starting point.

If it is about brands and their customers, or agencies / tool providers towards brands: Always Listen First would be a great start.

Yes you might have noticed: I love disruptive powers that changing the rules in the marketplace. But I also love good “old” ways of research like NPS.

So in this story I tried to share insights and my opinion: my subjective beliefs that are a result of my knowledge, experience, emotions and my interpretations of facts.

Maybe you have noticed a “slight” affinity for disobedience? Well, following is indeed at your own risk.

My closing thought? I would like to see a fully integrated approach.

Agencies working together for their clients, combining their skills. And tool vendors that understand NPS.

The role of the CMO in this new value chain? He would be orchestrating his agencies.

One briefing to all agencies, and all agencies providing one integrated plan back to the CMO.

With this approach, even the not so CRM driven brands can score a much higher Social NPS.

Does that make sense?

What About You?
How do you see this Facebook switch towards NPS? How do you integrate NPS into your social strategy? I’d love to read your opinion in the comments below.

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About the Author
Igor Beuker was CMO at 3 listed companies, chairman at the IAB, jury member at Webby, AMMA and Esprix awards, founder of 3 digital agencies (sold to WPP) and global chief social officer at Mindshare. Now he is ‘freejack’ consultant and a sought after keynote speaker.