5 Facebook Marketing Strategies

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.

Such campaigns paved way for brands to think beyond ATL promotions. Today, it is more about getting the audience to act that to wait for them to act.

Like it to fight it.

When a Pink Ribbon can curtail the crab…

My association with cancer patients stems from my professional obligations for last one

decade. I have seen normal people come with some undefined symptom and land into the nightmare of getting diagnosed with some form of cancer.

Cancer is a disease unlike any other. In every other disease, the patient has an established hope of returning back, cured and fit. But in case of cancer, that hope is generally missing. Not just from the patient’s mind, but from the mind of the family as well.

I have seen people enter a doctor’s chamber happily but after few days of consulting and testing, totally getting transformed into a different person altogether. And again, this is not only with the concerned individual but the accompanying close ones too.

Couple of encounters, one of a family friend and another of a relative, shall forever remain etched in my memory. From leading a totally normal life to suddenly finding themselves with just a few months to live, their conduct and their battles have made me see life is a totally different manner. As much as I appreciate life now, the uncertainty of it has made me fear it too. Remembering the emotions of knowing that they won’t survive, even before they knew, makes me shudder even today.

Breast cancer, or any other cancer, comes unannounced. Most important day, in my opinion, is when the doctor BREAKS THE NEWS that he or she is suffering from cancer. Most of the hospitals and doctors do take care to be as gentle as possible. I always feel that this is the time when NGOs should come into the picture. There is the Cancer Care Organization which deals with counseling and helps patients to live a quality life, but a lot more people and effort is required.

This brings us to the question “what would be the outcome of the treatment?” If diagnosed early, the chances of survival is higher. For example early detection of Breast Cancer generally provides a better scope of long and quality life. In my opinion if diagnosed early, Cancer is a disease which itself cooperates with the patients.

Evolving Knowledge, competent specialists, state of art technique, targeted medicine and advanced surgical and radiation therapy are available to the mankind to counter the so called dreaded disease. In fact there should be campaign to tell that it is not a DREADED disease, only thing is, one should be alert and action should be taken at the very first sign being noticed. And thus, I am glad that corporate such as Lavasa took up this cause through there wonderful initiative the Lavasa Women’s Drive.

To summarize, my take home message for any kind of cancer and specially Breast cancer:

1. Self Breast Examination very easy to conduct herself must be done every week.

2. Never ignore any feeling of swelling or lump, contact your Doctor immediately.

3. If you are in a big city, go to a cancer hospital or a cancer specialist.

4. Even if you have been diagnosed with cancer of any origin, remember not to lose HOPE, people around the world have survived for more than 20 years after he or she was diagnosed.

5. Timely investigation and treatment will help an individual to live longer and with better QOL.

6. Hygienic living, balanced food, plenty of water, open air exercise, yoga and to top it a feeling or sense of “ I am better and I will come out stronger” gives great strength.

7. Never ever accept or seek sympathy. Do your normal daily works, for that keeps a good health.

8. Keep yourself engaged with what satisfies you.

9. Let your family member feel happy and less stressed.

10. Lastly, be in touch with your doctor for time bound Review and for any new development at health front.

The crux of the cancer management is QOL, quality of life. The treatment outcome is measured as Progression Free Survival, meaning leading a normal life without any progression of disease. And if educated, we can have a lot more Cancer Survivors than what we have today.

As narrated by Mr. M. K. Sinha, Former General Manager, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Limited.

Social Media Marketing

A communication tool that allows one of the largest laptop manufacturers t

o get new business worth $ 3 million and helps someone to become the President of one of the most powerful nations in the world cannot be ignored.

Social Media Networking has given mute brands, a voice that is allowing them to connect, communicate and engage their target audience. It has also provided the consumers with a new and more personal way of attaining cognitive information and insight

about a brand, which proclaims to be a manifestation of the individual.

With emergence of Social Media Networking, the power may have shifted completely from the Brand owners to the Brand users. But if the brands are willing to accept this new tool

, they can bring that much needed personal and human touch to their offerings.

This will also allow the Brand owners to keep the consumers hooked to their products for a longer tenure than they were previously doing. An intelligent and a smart brand will acknowledge that the days of Brand Loyalty are over and only those brands that make the effort of being amongst their users shall survive the evolution that is Social Media Networking.

Understanding and thereafter integrating the tools of Social Media Networking into a marketing plan is today becoming as important as advertising was about two decades ago. Quoting from the Dentsu Handbook of Social Networking, “Social Media helps in lead generation, brand recollection, increase number of transaction and create awareness. Which brand would not want that.”

With 500 million users hooked to one platform, that just became 550 million by the time this line was completed, the scope of reaching out to consumers is infinite. Today Facebook profile of an individual gets more attention than the individual her/himself. In such a scenario, a Brand that does not have a Facebook page will surely struggle for recognition.

And like any Social Media expert will tell you, Facebook is just the tip of the iceberg. Today with Twitter, Orkut, Linkedin, MySpace, Digg and what not, the total number of consumers that one can reach through these platforms far exceeds any other media.

Today, an application on Facebook allows the users to experience the Brand from the comfort of their home. It allows them to engage with the product like never before. A virtual tour of an Ikea store on Facebook in an area far from a physical Ikea store can make the consumer choose one brand over another.

With such a powerful tool at their disposal, the brand managers now understand the scope of using Social Media Marketing. It is also helping in generating the most powerful sales driver, the word of mouth promotion. A cool fan page or application can drive far greater sales than any advertising campaign could have ever done.

Like Carol Kruse, Vice President Global Interactive Marketing, Coco Cola puts it, “we have a lot of online and community driven loyalty programs and we understand what exponential Brand Equity we can generate with these tools.”

Planning.

The internal anxiety to achieve success is as old a problem as the human race itself. The human mind has been trained and wired to think of the consequences of failure rather than the glory of achievement, much before either comes knocking.

What should be a life of dreaming and achieving is, thus, reduced to a life of worrying and failure. All of us know the affects and effects of positive thinking, but very few of us can bring ourselves to act on it. When faced by a challenge which in any situation won’t be more daunting than mere turning up at an appointed hour, at a pre-determined location for a known discussion, we

start to wonder about things such as what if we can’t turn up at the right time? What if we lose our way? Or more hilarious options like, what if my tie is not of the right length or crazier still, what if the other person doesn’t respond? The effort that we put in conjuring up such fantastic hurdles in our lives could well be used in creating a more positive atmosphere around us. Of telling ourselves that each piece of the grand puzzle will fit in to its place to reveal the amazing beauty of what is, life.

Not much in my life has gone according to the plan. Ideally I should have been in IIT. Ideally I should have thereafter done an MBA from a B school that would get me a job which paid so much that my only worry would have been to invest it properly to avoid more problems of taxation. Ideally by the age that I am right now, I should have been well settled in a place where I had a huge car, a grand house in one of the Metros and with enough money in my account so that a trip to Phuket would be like a drive from Mumbai to Pune.

But it is not.

I didn’t graduate from IIT. I went to an obscure engineering college in one remote part of the country. A place more famous for its Vada Pavs rather than an engineering college. But think of this. I did have few of the most memorable years in that place. It was one of the most beautiful places in the country. I am sure if I was in IIT I would have repeated a 5 point someone, but instead I passed out a Mumbai University Topper. And got into one of the most renowned conglomerates of India.

Logic says, there after the planning should have kicked in. MBA from that insane B school would have come. With job security already in place, all I would have to do was work my way to the top. Well, my path was a little different. I took to an institute which only those who were working in that field would know about. That also when told about the mother brand that it came under. Most of the time I elicited a response which ranged from a surprised “where?” to a more questioning, “really?”

But again, take a note of this. I did go to an institute which I feel is as good as those insane pay package B schools. An institute which allowed me to be, well, me. It gave me the opportunity to hold my camera right in the face of the most celebrated personalities of this country and say, “well, this is what I am learning.” Where my class room was not just a room, but an open canvas on which I painted and re-painted till I got the master piece. What that institute gave me is incomparable. It took a lot away from me, but none of those sacrifices were for waste. For I believe, what I gained was about as high as those insane pay packages. Though my real pay package is not even covered under the current tax slab.

I can’t think of flying to Phuket as if it was a Mumbai-Pune drive. But I can always think of Mumbai-Pune drive. And you know what? Think of this- every time I drive, I enjoy being in the driver’s seat… looking around and listening to my radio. Now, will you be able to enjoy flying to Phuket that much? Are you allowed to steer the aircraft yourself? And I am sure, the wind in the hair experience won’t be too welcomed in the aircraft.

I also don’t have an insane pay package so forget a bank account full of money. Hence I don’t have the worries of taxation to bother me either. The day I feel like going out for a grand meal, I don’t think of which place to go to. I think of: I want to go out. And I leave. Wherever the destination might be. However expensive or however cheap.

For me a holiday is not where, but with who and how. How being in question to enjoyment and not means. I live free of these tensions. I live free of the money I get from my job. Of course I don’t advocate this style to anyone, to each his own.

What I do advocate is a life little less complicated. A life, little less stressful. A life, where we are not constrained by who we want to be, who we should be and who we actually are. A life where we don’t have the negativity surrounding us like a bubble. A life not spent anxious about the outcomes that may not even happen. There is an equal probability of success and failure, and don’t contest me, an engineer, on that. So if I have the equal chance of success, why should I give more time to worrying than to celebrate my probable success?

Live life with a touch of hope and an attitude of happiness. It can change your world.

- From the workstation of an obscure engineering college graduate and a master from an ambitious institute, who walks around masquerading as a CREATIVE B.E, MBA Graduate.