Not long ago, marketing managers were more than happy to launch a product with few ad campaigns, a gala launch event and a celebrity endorsement. But in today’s Facebook generation, brands are beginning to go where the masses are, instead of relying on the masses to come to them. With 600 million members, Facebook represents real-time access to the online mainstream.
Campaigns such as Nescafe Know Your Neighbour have shown that most of the big names are now ready to explore the alternate medium of communicating to the target audience. The Launch of Tata Aria led the automobile industry towards an unknown territory, of running a launch campaign via social media.
But there is still a lack of confidence amongst the brand managers to make Facebook Marketing a key strategy of the overall marketing plan. The brands prefer to join the Facebook network once they have already established themselves. Or, the social media campaign is looked upon as a support to the main campaign which runs on ATL medium.
However, there are instances where Social Media Campaigns have given much better results by themselves and in some cases outperformed the main marketing campaign by going as far as product launches via Facebook. Internationally brands have been using their Facebook Pages to connect with customers. Even application makers are building tools that small and big brands alike can use to sell their products and offer Facebook-tailored customer support.
Here is a look at 5 Marketing Strategies that your brand can adopt.
1. Facebook Launches
Product launches on Facebook is becoming a new trend. Big brand names including Ford and Nike are going so far as to release on Facebook first. In Nike’s case, the athletic wear company opted to debut its three-minute World Cup advertisement on their Facebook Page before they released it anywhere else. The ad then went on to break viral records.
Ford’s ambitious 2011 Ford Explorer Reveal campaign is an example of knowing how to break the trend. The car maker decided to forgo auto shows and reveal its new car on the web, with Facebook as the centerpiece of the company’s online reveal strategy.
The campaign proved to be more successful than anticipated. On reveal day, Ford produced the number one trending topic on Twitter in the U.S.; the Explorer was the number two most searched for term on Google; Ford’s YouTube reveal video garnered 11,000 views; more than 50,000 Ford Explorer Facebook “Likes” flooded in; and, perhaps best of all, 25,000 potential car buyers built and priced new Explorers on the company’s website.
Tata Motors tried a similar tactics with the launch of Aria. They created an application for Facebook users called "Build Your Dream Car," where the users were invited to assemble the mystery car. This built a lot of curiosity amongst the car enthusiasts with the car garnering a lot of media coverage.
2. Facebook Places Experimentation
The Facebook Places location is just a few weeks old, but because Facebook’s checkin features integrate so tightly with the entire Facebook experience, Facebook Places is a business opportunity in the making.
Westfield Valley Fair mall used the Facebook Places to offer a checkin special to its Facebook members who promote their shopping behaviours through Facebook Places. The special in question offers a coupon — powered by Fan Appz — for discounts in exchange for a checkin. The special may resemble the variety we’ve seen on Foursquare (Foursquare), but it’s still an ingenious effort to turn Facebook fans into offline buyers.
3. Facebook Business
Facebook’s brand-friendly Pages (pages) are proving to be more than just wall-centric places for fan and brand comments and photos. Businesses of all sizes are finding that they can make their page double as a store front, and in so doing sell their products and goods to window-wall-shopping Facebook users.
Huge corporate entities like Disney and Delta are in the business of selling on Facebook. Disney, for instance, built the Disney Tickets Together Facebook application so that fans could pre-order tickets to Toy Story 3 without leaving the social network.
The big guys aren’t the only businesses capitalizing on Facebook’s sales-friendly platform. Small businesses are enlisting the likes of Wildfire and Payvment to help them create and manage their own Facebook store fronts and deal centers.
4. Facebook Customer Support
Social media has long been touted as a vehicle for brands to provide better customer service. The challenge is that so many customers are social media savvy, which means complaints and requests can get lost in the fray.
In recent months, Get Satisfaction (Get Satisfaction) and Parature have stepped in to help businesses tackle this new challenge. Both companies are reporting rapid adoption for their inside-Facebook customer service platforms.
Get Satisfaction’s Social Engagement Hub, built by Involver, extends the functionality of its popular customer support service to Facebook and offers full-featured support that integrates with the client’s existing dashboard. Parature is a bit newer to the space, but the Parature for Facebook customer service application is already getting traction from brands hoping to channel Facebook for direct customer engagement.
5. Facebook CSR
CSR through Facebook is a rising trend. One of the biggest trends is for the corporate to solicit fan action on Facebook to ensure its charitable causes get greater exposure. The social good trend obviously extends beyond Facebook and to social media sites in general, but Facebook Pages and “Like” buttons are doing their part to inspire collective action.
Last year, Target launched the “Bullseye Games” Facebook application and let fans choose where the discount retailer should spend its weekly $3 million charitable contributions. More recently, Aviva life insurance launched a global charity campaign by asking people to donate their pic to be part of their "Bigger Picture" campign to donate money for various social services.
