‘Bulmers Facebook fans worth £3.82 more a week’

Heineken’s cider brand Bulmers has found that its Facebook fans are worth £3.82 more to the company in sales a week than non-fans, which the brand says could be due to the way it ensures social is integrated within other marketing activity.

Bulmers Plan B ad

Research conducted by TNS and We Are Social, which surveyed Bulmers’ Facebook fans and compared results with a sub-sample of cider drinkers, found the average retail value of its fans was worth £198.64 more to the brand a year than non-fans.

The research, first unveiled at the IAB’s Great British Social Media Festival, also found that brand preference was higher in Facebook fans than the control cell and that fans were more likely to pay more and recommend Bulmers to others.

Doug Cook, Bulmers brand manager, told Marketing Week the research, while not definitive, has helped his team talk about social media at a “more senior level” in the business, which he thinks has led to the brand increasing its investment in digital this year.

He adds: “[This research] is evidence we have recruited the right people for our Facebook page, who drive real value for the business, not just chasing numbers with a scattergun approach.”

The news will be welcomed by marketers who have called on Facebook and Twitter to give them more case studies that prove the monetary value of their sites to brands, particularly when it comes to paying for advertising on the platforms.

Cook advises that brands who are looking to drive monetary value to their business on Facebook should focus on “concise targeting and making sure all marketing touchpoints are integrated with social media”.

Bulmers commits to making sure all its other marketing activity integrates social in some way in order to drive people who are interested in the brand to its Facebook page. This in the past has included using the Facebook logo on ad campaigns and also pointing consumers who had played a game via a poster QR code back towards its page.

Paid-for ads have also helped Bulmers increase the size of its Facebook fan base.

To drive engagement once it recruits fans on Facebook, Bulmers posts photos, videos and competitions to keep the brand front of mind. Facebook has previously said that photos tend to get twice the engagement rate of text-only page posts

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