Net Promoter Survey of Facebook Promoted Posts

I recently decided to try my hand at marketing. No, I’m not a marketer – I don’t even claim to profess to know anything at all about the topic. Though, I certainly would appreciate a private tutor to help me with it. But, I thought I’d give it a shot. I published a little, fun Kindle Book recently and decided to try marketing it on Facebook as a Promoted Post. A promoted posts is where one creates a post, it shows up in your timeline, and when you pay $7.00 (the cost of a facebook promoted posts), your post containing the marketing message supposedly stays in the timeline longer and is seen by more people.

Results?

The reality is I have no idea what the results of the campaign were. Yeah, I lost $7.00, but here’s what I learned:

1. If you’re going to try something, you need a way to keep score – this answers whether or not the thing you’re trying is working out or not.
2. If you’re gonig to try something new, do so in a quick and cheap way. This approach supports the concept of Minimal Viable Product (MVP) and is also well in alignment to the principles of Lean Manufacturing.

Net Promoter Score

Well, several days after the campaign and well after my $7.00 went into a black hole, I received an email from Facebook asking me to complete a survey. Awesome – I like surveys, so I decided to take it.

And, sure enough, the survey is centered around the Net Promoter Program.

View the survey below.

Below are the specific questions Facebook asked in the survey:

1. How likely are you to recommend Facebook to someone you know? (0 = Not at all Likely / 10 = Extremely Likely)
2. What percentage of your friends do you assume see each of your posts in their newsfeed?
   • Their choice of wording is strange. “Assume” is weird. “Believe” might be a better option.
3. Are you aware of a new option to ‘promote’ a post on Facebook?
   • Again, weird survey question. Of course I’m aware – I already did it.
4. Please share any feedback you have about the option to promote a post you make on Facebook.
5. How satisfied are you with what happened when you promoted a post?
   • completely dissatisfied
   • very dissatisfied
   • somewhat dissatisfied
   • neither satisfied nor dissatisfied
   • somewhat satisfied
   • very satisfied
   • completely satisfied
6. Why were you either satisfied, neutral, or not satisfied with your promoted post?
   • Again, odd question.
7. How likely are you to recommend the promote option to someone you know?
   • Interesting. A Net Promoter question for their promote a post product. Answer: Not likely.
8. How satisfied were you with the following:
   • The report of how your promoted posts performed
   • How many of your friends saw your promoted posts
   • How many of your friends either commented or liked your promoted posts
   • The way the promoted posts looked in the newsfeed
     • My answer to the above questions? Completely Unsatisfied. Why? Well, I never received a report, so I have no idea how the actual promoted post performed.
9. How much better or worse do you feel the option to promote a post makes your experience on Facebook?
   • Much worse
   • Worse
   • Neither better nor worse
   • Better
   • Much better
     • Again, odd question. Actually, it’s terrible questionnaire design.
     • A better question would have been: “Thinking of the feature of promoted posts, from a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is Definitely, rate the option of having the option to promote a post”
10. What percentage of your friends do you assume see each of your PROMOTED posts?
    • This question is slightly varied from question #2; question #2 focused on posts in a Facebook timeline in general, whereas this question focuses on the Promoted Posts feature and how many of my friends I think saw it. My answer – I have zero idea. There were no reports to tell me otherwise.

So, thinking of the Facebook Quarterly earnings on October 23, 2012, my guess is that many on Wall Street will be curious about how Facebook’s attempts at creating other revenue streams are going. If other customer’s experience is like mine, the answer would be “not very good”. But, knowing what I know about Mark Zuckerberg, I’m sure they’ll figure this out and quickly find a product that is good for customers as well as for Facebook monetization efforts.