FB's God Database Can Hurt Your Business

Part II of a series of three articles on the dangers of trusting your data to FB. Part I is here


Maruti Suzuki, has just relaunched its iconic best-seller the Swift. This is the car that created a whole new segment, the premium hatch, and has helped Maruti retain its numero uno postion in the automotive market. The premium hatch has since become a highly competitive segment with every manufacturer from number two Hyundai to the Japanese, Americans and Germans looking to break Swift's hegemony.

The crucial launch also comes at a time when car sales are slowing on the back of high interest rates and ever rising fuel bills. All-in-all Maruti has a lot riding on this launch and has pulled out all stops with their marketing strategy, including an aggressive social media presence. Their FB page has drawn over 214,000 fans in just over a month. These fans are a testament to Swift's popularity as well as Maruti's social media strategy. Their marketing collateral drums up support for their FB page and the usual social media links appear on the site as well.

However, in doing this, Maruti (like so many other corporates) are sending across their most sensitive data...that of potential buyers to FB and other social networks. The irony is these networks have more data on the potentials than Maruti itself does.

For example, if I was a potential Swift buyer and happen to go the website, I could gather a lot of the information, without actually providing my contact details to Maruti. I only do that if I want to book a test drive, buy a car or want a company representative to get in touch with me. But during the process if I also happen to click on the FB icon and like the page, Facebook knows me as a potential Swift buyer and has access to my contact information. 

This is what FB has on me:

• Email IDs (primary and secondary)
• Mobile number
• Address (including city of residence)
• They can also reach out to me every time I log onto Facebook, which is pretty much everyday.

Granted not all users share phone numbers or addresses, but it is mandatory to provide email IDs when setting up an FB account.

So in effect FB has the ability to directly influence the buying decision of potential Swift customers at a number of touch points including:  

• On their FB home page
• Through emails
• On phone
• Via direct mail

To be fair to FB, I haven't seen a single competitor ad either on my home page or received any marketing collateral from other car markers. In other words FB knows I probably want to buy a Swift but has not acted on that information. The point, however, is not what FB has done with the data, but the inherent danger of passing on this information to a third party. Why expose your data to exploitation and worse to the possibility of data theft at a source you cannot control?

In the rush to build the perfect social media strategy corporates are flouting fundamental marketing tenets and putting their businesses at risk. Social media is a legitimate part of today's marketing strategy but it has to be used to grow business not destroy it.

Part III is about the right social media strategy.