According to the study named The Power of Like 2: How Social Marketing Works by ComScore, in collaboration with Facebook, marketing on the world's most populous online social network Facebook can actually help in increasing sales for a brand. The report leverages data on earned media exposure from the ComScore Social Essentials product, and ad effectiveness data from ComScore AdEffx.

The report found that people who were fans of Starbucks and Target, or friends of those fans, were more likely to buy something than those who were not fans. People become fans by hitting a "like" button for a brand's Facebook page and receiving updates about that brand mixed in with content shared by their friends.

The report further said that for too long, brands’ focus on Fan acquisition as a primary indicator of success has ignored the ways in which social marketing actually works to achieve marketing objectives like reach, brand resonance, and ultimately sales. “By understanding the core elements of maximizing reach on Facebook – Fan Reach, Engagement, and Amplification – brands can benchmark their performance against other brands and devise strategies to improve on these dimensions and deliver measurable social marketing ROI,” added the report.

“Our learning provides quantifiable evidence that earned media exposure can be valuable in influencing consumer behavior – and specifically the sort of behaviors that brands most want to induce, such as purchase. Secondly, they demonstrate that there is a latent branding effect that continues to drive increasing lift in purchase behavior weeks following exposure. Both of these conclusions provide more evidence that Facebook can be very valuable as a branding medium,” the report quoted.

In the case of Starbucks, those exposed to the company's message on Facebook were 38 per cent more likely than the typical Facebook user to make a purchase in the four weeks that followed. Target saw a 21 per cent lift in the same time frame.

The research analyzed the effects of Starbucks earned media exposure on Facebook and the lift in Starbucks in-store purchase incidence in the four weeks following exposure. The results showed a statistically significant positive lift in purchase incidence in each of the four weeks following exposure, and an increasing cumulative lift during those time periods.

In addition to looking at how earned media drives purchase frequency, the research also examines how paid Facebook media impacts sales. A ComScore AdEffx study of a large retailer in this paper examines the effects of exposure to Facebook Premium Ads on in-store and online purchase behavior. The result is a significant lift in purchase incidence due to advertising exposure.