Speed Summary: Adobe Whitepaper on The Business Value of the Facebook Like

Adobe has just published a short whitepaper on the business value of Facebook Likes, including a practical hands-on guide for leveraging the ubiquitous button (download). It’ll be motherhood and apple pie for many, and is a soft-sell for the Adobe Online Marketing Suite, but it contains one of the best articulations of what social commerce ‘does’ we seen – social commerce transforms purchase funnels into viral loops.  Sweet.

The paper can be downloaded here, but heres the speed summary:

The Like button drives word of mouth and referral traffic from Facebook, and when optimised can generate significant, measurable returns.

• Over 40% of Levi’s traffic from all sources came from Facebook after the company added the Like button to its website. Facebook visitors spend on average 57% more
• American Eagle added the Like button next to every product on its site and found Facebook-referred visitors spent an average of 57% more money than those not referred by Facebook.
• The average media site integrated with the Like button sees a 300% increase in referral traffic.

The Like Button transforms the purchase/marketing funnel into a viral loop – awareness-interest-decision-action-recommendation-awareness… In other words, social media creates what Google calls a Zmot – a zero moment of truth when recommendations create awareness.

A four step process will help businesses optimise business returns from the Like button;