How Facebook Used “Data” To Get Me To Promote A Post

If you've spent any time around here, you know I'm a huge proponent of data-driven marketing.

This method involves collecting lots of internal and external data to personalize marketing communications, custom-tailor offers, and deliver the right messages to the right people at the right time.

Without data, you're forced to speak to everyone the same, deliver messages at predetermined intevals (instead of when subscribers are most apt to take action), and miss out on opportunities to really speak directly to the needs and desires of your prospects and customers.

Here's a recent example of how facebook used internal data to persuade me to promote one particular fan page post:

To give you a quick backstory - I posted a photo of this remarkable building designed in the form of a piano and cello on our hearandplay.com facebook fan page. And Facebook was right... it received thousands of "likes," hundreds of shares, and tons of comments.

I've gotten pretty used to Facebook encouraging me to promote my posts. In fact, they've made a practice out of taking your last post and showing it in the right side bar with the headline "See Your Ad Here."

But this latest ad was different and immediately caught my attention. They acknowledged something specific about my post.

This post is getting more engagement than 95% of your recent posts. Promote your highest performing posts to get more likes, comments and shares for the same budget.

It made me say: "Wow, they're right."

They connected the dots for me.

Had I already realized this post was a hit? Sure I did.

Had I automatically thought, "I should promote this post because if it's done this well without promotion, imagine how far it could get. Heck, it may even go viral!"?

No. And apparently if I did, it wasn't enough for me to take action.

That day, Facebook stepped into the realm of data-driven marketing. They appealed directly to me and it worked. I promoted the post and it went on to reach over 100,000 people.

But the big moral of the story is:

Are you doing generic, "See Your Ad Here" marketing or are you reaching into the data, pulling out what you know about them (based on what they tell you or more importantly, what they do), and crafting messages meant to speak directly to the self-interests of your reader?

"See Your Ad Here" is generic, regular marketing.

"Look Jermaine, your last post was a winner --- better than 95% of your posts. This should be the post you promote!" That's data-driven, personalized marketing and the foundation of the Peak Potential Profits program.

Until next time -