Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Take Free Out of Your Facebook Marketing Strategy

Part III of a series on effective Facebook marketing. Part I is here and Part II here


In a first for the airline, British Airways launched its latest commercial on Facebook, earlier today. The reason for choosing Facebook was so the airline could reach the widest possible audience at no cost. The fact that it had close to 100,000 fans for its Facebook page and the media buzz of an innovative social media campaign launch should have provided a nice opening to the ad.



A little less than five hours since the launch the ad had received a total of 301 views. Unfortunately, this is also the story for most campaigns that look to leverage the free in social media.

In focusing almost exclusively on free, marketers are missing a huge opportunity. Facebook is a great marketing tool...but to really enjoy the benefits of its 750 million+ active users, you have to look at a different set of metrics. Use the same tools that you deploy when working out a traditional media campaign across Print, TV, Radio and Outdoors. The results will shock you. Here are a few stats:

  • Facebook has over 750 million active users.
  • These users spend on average 6.4 hours a month on the site.
  • You can target your campaign by geography, gender, age and interests. 
  • Facebook ads provides better value that Google Adwords.
  • There is far less clutter on Facebook.
A few more pointers for an effective online marketing strategy:
  • Send the traffic to your site: Not to your social media business page. Here's why.
  • Personalize: Social media has proved that users are looking for a personal, tailor made experience. Your ability to create a personalized experience for every user is critical.
  • Conversations are at the heart of every social media platform. Move away from simple information sharing platforms that most sites are today to truly community interaction platforms. 
  • Content is key: Great content is at the heart of every successful viral campaign. This is critical to break through the clutter. 
Finally social media platforms have identified what users expect from websites. It is up to you to recast your online identities to meet these expectations.

PS: The next set of posts will focus on how to rebuild websites to incorporate the best elements of social media platforms.



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5 comments:

  1. IFASeptember 22, 2011 at 9:42 AM

    I will now seriously start visiting your Blog. Learning can be at any age.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Surajit AgarwalSeptember 22, 2011 at 9:46 AM

    Thank you Papa, its a great joy that you're reading my blog. Love you.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Stephanie SammonsSeptember 22, 2011 at 7:40 PM

    Surajit your insights are very interesting. I'd love to know more about your thinking here. If we drive traffic to our sites, when and where is the most effective opportunity to do that? After the "Like" is clicked? Through wall posts? Through tabs?

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Surajit AgarwalSeptember 22, 2011 at 7:56 PM

    Hi Stephanie,
    Thank you for the feedback. Tough question for which there is no easy answer. I believe all marketing collateral should point to one destination and that would be your website....of course there are exceptions to this rule. For example: you could look at a short term marketing activity aimed at boosting fans on your FB business page to kick start the community there.

    I find links work best as a way to drive traffic back to the site. The thing with the "like" button that are generally used is, these buttons send users to the Facebook business page. Now FB is an extremely addictive platform...once on the page the user might notice he has messages, wall posts etc and get diverted, therefore not going back to the website he actually came from.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Surajit AgarwalNovember 28, 2011 at 12:04 PM

    Comment from BA on myventurepad. Posting it here as for some reason the comment is not showing up below the article on the site and I don't have the necessary access to change that:

    Hi Surajit

    Thanks so much for your comments about the British Airways brand campaign.

    Could I point out that there's an inaccuracy in your post.

    The reason that you may have seen theview count stall at 300 is that when views increase significantly in a veryshort time, YouTube will stop the external view count while it determineswhether or not the views are spam. Typically when this happens, you'llnoticed a big jump in the number views appear within hours to 24 hoursafter once we've determined that the views are not spam
    When views increase signficantly in a very short time, YouTube will stop the external view count while it determines whether or not the views are spam. When it determines that they are not spam, the numbers will appear.

    If you go to our YouTube page again, you will see this number has increased signficantly, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4JdQi60an0 I'd also like to say that the views, once again, have been frozen.

    Thank you

    Nuria Garrido
    Digital Marketing Innovations Team, British Airways

    ReplyDelete

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