By Chris Lee

According to a study released this month in the US, Facebook is by far the most favoured social network among marketers. The Social Media Examiner 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report found that from a field of 3,300 marketers interviewed, more than nine in every ten (92 per cent) of US marketers use Facebook as part of their online marketing strategy. This compares to 84 per cent using Twitter and 71 per cent engaging in LinkedIn.

This represented a rise from 87 per cent in 2010. With a global audience of more than 630 million and plenty of opportunities to target consumers it is easy to see why marketers are interested in Facebook.

To help companies make the most of marketing via Facebook, social technology company Techlightenment has developed a social research platform (SRP) for Facebook, which Techlightenment says enables companies to gather more intuitive market intelligence. NMK got in touch with the company’s CEO, Ankur Shah, to learn more.

Briefly explain how the social research platform for Facebook works

The social research platform is an online survey or poll conducted amongst Facebook users from around the world and it can survey up to 10,000 people in 24 hours. The survey application can site either on Facebook, a brand's website or mobile. As such, brands can either license the poll or they can drive a guaranteed level of respondents through the [advertising marketplace] Adknowledge platform. The SRP is a fast, cost-effective way to gather market intelligence at massive scale.
The real difference in the SRP is that it layers social data - such as a consumer's interests and demographics - over traditional survey data, thereby increasing vastly the value of those respondents. This enables brands to make more informed decisions about everything from product development and advertising campaigns to marketing strategies and competitive positioning.

How is the insight any different from that which organisations would get directly from Facebook when creating ad campaigns on the channel?

Ad campaign level data is fairly rudimentary and is restricted to ad performance and general demographic data. The SRP drives incredibly granular level data. By using the Facebook platform the SRP combines both questions and deep social data. This includes age, gender, location, likes and groups. By normalising that data the SRP can identify trends in the data, for example we recently discovered that iPhone users are disproportionately more likely to fans of The Beatles and Lady Gaga as compared to Android users. In short, the depth of insight available through the SRP is unparalleled and goes far beyond that available through ad campaign data.
It does however complement ad campaign data, for example we are currently running a survey to understand which ad image, headline, copy and product features are the most popular and amongst which demographic - this immediately transfers to a media plan which has already been confirmed by users as popular. This is just one way bands can use the SRP.

Can you cite an example of where a customer has used this platform and seen tangible uptakes in “likes”, traffic and/or sales as a result?

Dr Martens is one of the clients currently trying the SRP. Dr. Martens’ use of the data will relate to product development and marketing strategy and will result in some very tangible output.

However, a better example may be a financial services company that is currently using the platform. They have asked users various lifestyle questions about debt, driving thousands of users through the platform. The most powerful part of the SRP for them was the fact that following completion of the poll over 10 per cent of users completed a lead form to be contacted by the company about their services.

In this way the SRP not only drove vast amounts of insight, which will inform the way in which they target products in the future, but equally importantly it walked users through a journey which made them consider the brand's product in a different way leading to a substantial level of leads for the brand.