Facebook fan pages - who are they serving?

I sat through a 3+ hour presentation last week by a noted social media ‘expert’. He had much to offer and kept the presentation moving and also took time to answer questions along the way which I always like to see. However despite the fact that he had spoken to groups like ours a number of times the presentation did not resonate as much as it could have because he did not do his homework on the audience. Our group is a diverse group of executives that run companies of varying sizes and distinctly different focuses.

When the conversation turned to Facebook fan pages it was his opinion that ALL companies should have a Facebook fan page. It was all I could do to not jump and say – WHY? WHAT FOR? For instance my company is a direct and digital marketing agency. Why would somebody ever want to be a fan of my company?

Furthermore the strategy was to contact people in my Facebook friends and ask them to be a ‘fan’ of my company. Since I use Facebook as a place to keep up with friends and family I felt strongly that it was a cheesy notion to ask them to be a ‘fan’ of my company. I don’t think of my Facebook relationships as a platform for business offers.

I do have friends that have retail oriented businesses that have Facebook fan pages. This makes sense to me. If you have a retail business (restaurant, gym, boutique) having a fan page allows the distribution of special offers, sales, and other types of promotions. A FB fan page in retail businesses offers the potential of real added value to those that have decided to become ‘fans’.

Where I don’t see FB fan pages working well is in the business to business sector. Would you want to be a FB fan of your health or car insurance company? GEICO actually has a fan page with more than 6,000 fans. What are these people receiving for their fandom? More offers on additional insurance? My guess is they are not receiving deeper insurance rate discounts than the general population so where would there be value?

How about a DMV FB fan page? (Ok that would never happen anyway).

What I am missing here?