But on FB, not so much. The essential difference in the way the two communities work, in my opinion, is that MySpace is an environment in which you primarily visit pages of others, whereas FB is more geared to using your profile page as a home base and having information brought to you.
Not to say that you cannot visit pages on FB. You can. And you will. But because of the plethora of widgets and other applications available in FB, there’s far less need to go a wandering.
That's a small part of what makes this site FAR more popular with professionals, because it isn’t so much a seeking environment – meaning I seek information and contacts – but rather more of a having environment – one in which news, functionalities, games, and other useful and divertive bits of data are brought to you.
Because so many business people are on FB, interest in using it for marketing is strong – stronger (I think) than using MySpace despite MySpace’s significantly higher uniques and page views. What I want to do in this post is offer some basic information on how to market on FB using techniques more suited to that environment.
For simplifaction, I'm going to do some lumping together of options and say there are really three kinds of marketing on FB: profile centric, ad centric, and app or widget centric.
PROFILE CENTRIC MARKETING
Brand Page: Anyone can build a page on FB, including a brand. Sign up, put together an appropriate business page, and you’re set. It probably makes more sense for a marketer to get a business page than a personal page. FB itself says a business page is better than a profile page because:
“These pages come pre-installed with custom functionality designed for each category. For example, a band Page has a music player, video player, discography, reviews, tour dates, a discussion board that the artists can take advantage of. Third party developers will also build an array of applications that they will compete for Page Admins to add to their Pages. Facebook Pages are also not subject to a fan limit and can automatically accept fan requests.”
In addition, savvy engineers can actually create an attractive environment – with graphics and colors and video and photos and of course text that can fit the brand standards of most brands. You can get started now, BTW, here.
But now what? First, a bit of language distinction. You friend people, you fan brands. The thing is, for most brands, the number of people who will make an effort to find your page and fan you is probably fairly limited. Don’t hold your breath unless you are going to make a concerted effort to create an environment with valuable experiences. Of course, that’s true on MySpace as well.
It’s also true that there are some viral aspects of FB that will help spread the word of your brand page. When you are friended by someone, the news of that friending will appear in the “Newsfeeds” of everyone in that person’s circle. This is usually found on the center of the user’s start page, and informs her of what she and her friends are up to.
Getting in Newsfeeds could prove very valuable for some brands, let’s say…adidas, but less valuable for others, let’s say…Pep Boys. That’s because the news will only have value to the extent that the brand itself is compelling enough to the Newsfeed viewers that they will click it.
Another interesting viral feature is the Minifeed, which appears on the profile page of the user and lists the things that the individual has done recently. News that a person has fanned your brand will also appear here. Ditto when the person performs an action on your page. The people who visit the profile will see it. Some may click the news of the fanning. But don’t expect the number of people who do that as a result of the average profile will be enough to fill a stadium.
Hey, I’m not poo-pooing it, it will get you some members. But if you think in millions like I do, you’re not gonna get there with just this. But every little helps. And it mushrooms of course, over time. If three people fan you and each generates three more fans, and so on, you get that exponential growth curve we all know and love.
Do all this. Absolutely. But once you have a profile and are getting a trickle of fans, there a number of other things you can do to boost your brand communication. Here are four of the most important ways:
Founding a Group: FB brands, can create groups and invite others to join them. To take a simplistic example, suppose Honda was trying to reach “tuners”, people who buy cars and modify them for better performance. Yes, there's a lot more to being a tuner than that, but you get the idea. There is a very specific demographic profile that has a high composition of tuners. By creating a tuner group and inviting likely suspects of tunerdom, Honda could build an environment that would allow them to dialogue with this audience effectively.
Here's an example of an independent tuner group, for reference:
With this as an example I bet you can see how a brand like Honda might want to build a group of its own.
As the creator of a group you will have some control over the content. Ensure you use it to make a better consumer experience rather than a shilling platform. Or all your fans will go away.
The key issue here is creating an environment of value to the audience. No one is going to sit still to watch Sell-a-thon commercials. But groups can be of enormous value to members. If you are a member of FB, click here to see a group of sneaker collectors. I have no doubt that a Nike or adidas sponsored sneaker collector group could garner thousands of member with the right content and inducements, for example advanced access to new shoes. O-Cel-O sponges might have more difficulty acquiring group members. But I am certain that some creativity applied to the O-Cel-O challenge could also make a group of value and interest to the target.
Joining a Group: Brands can communicate in groups they crate or sponsor. If there are ways to add value to the discussion, you comments may be most welcome. But too much overtness or commercialness in your communciaiton stream may get you kicked out of a group or have your entire presence in FB shut down. The FB people don’t mess around. They are very committed to the idea of consumer defined experience.
The next tool was a complete mystery to me until I read the excellent Bible of Facebook Marketing by Justin Smith. Thus I publish his entry below verbatim:
Joining a Network: Facebook Networks are like group pages for everyone who’s a member of an Educational, Work, or Geographical network. While no Facebook members “own” any pieces of network pages, network pages offer 1) another way for users to discover events, posted items, and marketplace listings, and 2) discussion forums and walls which any members can post to.
Network pages are probably the most commonly accepted places to spam in Facebook. While you can post there, keep in mind that your messages may be considered spammy even if they’re real and relevant.
Event Marketing: As with groups, event marketing allows FB users to invite people to real or virtual world events. For example, a vodka brand could invite people to a vodka tasting in a real bar in a city or group of cities.
Events automatically receive a special page on which you can put in all the necessary and tempting details. You can invite all your fans to an event, and the
page even collects RSVPs if you want to anticipate crowds and needs.
AD CENTRIC MARKETING
Whereas the tactics above are more geared to the hands-on marketer – one who is herself trying to integrate the brand and its messages into the fabric of FB, there are also a variety of other tools to consider. Many are simply FB versions of other forms of Internet advertising and Google AdSense (or Yahoo Publisher Network) . Here are some of the majors.
Beacon: Ah yes, beacon, the system in which users’ purchases on e-commerce sites were published as news in Minifeeds and Newsfeeds.
Started last November, the system is a sort of keeping up with the Joneses application that tells your friends what you just bought or did. The equivalent of how some people used to honk their horns in the street to brag to the neighbors when they brought home a new car.
Imagine yourself on FB, minding other people’s business in the Newsfeed, and you see, “Elaine just bought a St. John sweater set at BlueFly." Intrigued, you hustle on over to BlueFly and buy one yourself.
Beacon had problems in the beginning, principally because they did the classic Internet “you must opt out” in order not to participate in the program. Why do companies continue to do this crap?
In one widely reported scenario, a website providing the purchasing info to FB would deploy a 3 second pop-up saying, ‘do you wanna opt out?’. I have no idea if it was actually 3 seconds. But it wasn't enough. Problem was many people didn’t understand or notice. And the result was that, in one instance, a husband’s jewelry purchase was broadcast to his personal network – including his wife, who was the intended recipient of the ring as a gift.
Now, there was more damage here than a spoiled gift. It also led to rumors among those who read about it that the jewelry was not for his wife but for someone else. And a character is assassinated by a marketing app.
To their credit, FB responded quickly with program changes that, in a nutshell, made it an opt-in instead of an opt out. Responding quickly was incredibly important because there were thousands of people very ticked off, and activist group MoveOn was even driving a petition to stop the practice.
Since the wedding ring and other incidents occured last December, FB has changed the way it works. As they describe it on their site, “When you send an action to FB, the user is immediately alerted of the story you wish to publish and will be alerted again when they sign into FB. The user must proactively consent to have a story from your website published.”
I am not a fan of Beacon. The people at FB pitch it as a service to customers (“Enable your customers to share the actions they take on your website with their FB friends.”) I view it as an invasion of privacy, regardless of the changes. Target does not broadcast my Swiffer Mop purchase on a billboard, why on earth does FB?
Beacon’s certainly better than it was in terms of privacy. I still don’t like it. But there are people who honk their horns when they get a new car, and blingy people, and insecure teens, and and and, and so this may be an effective tool for transactional sites or other sites where relevant data are collected – for example a ratings site that records my “thumbs up” for a pizza parlor in Oakland CA.
Interestingly, I have a friend that works at FB that made the following remark when I asked him about it. “Your real problem with this is in the idea of conspicuous consumption, not privacy. You don’t like it that people advertise wealth.” As I read my words above, there is clearly some truth to that, but there’s also an issue to me about an ecommerce or other site sharing personally identifiable info with others without my explicit approval, except as given by my accepting a site terms document that runs on for 12 pages of seven point type.
Well anyway. You may have no problem with any of this.
Social Ads: What Social Ads does it that it delivers product information in a Newsfeed and Minifeed when people perform an act related to the product advertised. If I told people I was going motorcycling, then that statement might get paired with a text ad providing info on where to buy a specific brand of motorcycle, or for a local cycle shop.
You can, BTW, opt out of this easily.
Here’s how FB pitches it:
Reach the right people.
Instead of creating an advertisement and hoping that it reaches the right customers, you can create a Facebook Social Ad and target it precisely to the audience you choose. The ads can also be shown to users whose friends have recently engaged with your FB Page or engaged with your website through FB Beacon. Social Ads are more likely to influence users when they appear next to a story about a friend's interaction with your business.
Social Ads offers a broad range of demographic targeting options. Obviously, the closer the post is related to your brand, the better it will convert. You buy Social Ads with a self service application on the order of Adwords or Yahoo Search. They can be bought by CPC or CPM. As such, it appears to be an especially good tool for local retailers.
The key distinction from a privacy perspective is that the ads are paired with posts made through the FB environment. If you are willing to have your action posted in FB, pairing it with an ad doesn’t seem a breach of privacy. To me.
I don't opt out. I think FB needs to make money somehow, and this seems an excelelnt way to do it.
WIDGETS AND APPLICATIONS
Ah, widgets, the media darlings of H2 2007. Let me start by saying that I am very pro-application, pro-widget. The idea that you choose the information and functions that are brought to you on your pages is great.
There are tens and tens and tens of thousands of widgets out there. No one has any idea of the exact count. Some are in incredibly broad usage – Slide’s photo application is an example. Something like half of the FB users have this app in their FB presence. Another is FunWall, a service that soups up your comment wall with multimedia.
But what’s interesting is that with all this supply of widgets and apps, relatively few brands have really been able to take advantage of this phenomenon in a giant way. Why? Because they either haven’t tried or they haven’t done it right.
I’m gonna focus on “haven’t done it right.” Let’s start with the example of Sony’s Christmas Snowball. I should tell you that I had never heard of the snow globe until I did a search on FB marketing tips and found this post by Tim Faulkner on Valleywag. Here BTW is a picture of SnowGlobe:
SnowGlobe was pretty but got less than 500 downloaders. Why? There’s no point in my even trying to describe this better than Rodney Rumford did at FaceReviews, so I will print his comments verbatim:
Here is what is right about the Sony Snowglobes application:
* Creative idea
* Allows self expression and customization
* Visually exciting
* Uses notifications & mini-feed correctly
Here is what is wrong with the Sony Snowglobes application:
* No tabbed navigation
* No clear way to invite friends (I can’t believe they missed that!)
* It does not remember that I created a globe (very frustrating)
* After i create and send a globe i can’t navigate anywhere else (like to make a new one)
* No way to see which snowglobes my friends have created
* Text instructions are too long.
* Only allows for Christmas snowglobes. Too short of a product lifecycle window
* It makes me take an extra step to add the snowglobe to my profile page
* They promote 3 other apps in a very visually dominating way on the homepage (none of which have any success)
* The about page does not even have an image of what the app does. DUH!
* The profile page does not have messaging that makes we want to add the app.
* No one from Sony or their ad agency has responded to any of the reviews written on the applications wall.
There you have it.
You can do this right, but it’s tough. Not tough and therefore don't do it, but rather tough and therefore you should get help from someone who knows the space well. Frankly most brands need the help of a company that lives eats sleeps breathes social media. The key is finding an idea that has real consumer value, and then making it easy peasy to viral.
App Sponsorships
But let’s take another example. Also from Sony. Sony Studios rebranded that popular and (to those of us whom are sane) exasperating app called Vampires, which is from RockYou!
They rebranded it as part of their launch strategy for the Halloween picture 30 Scary Nights.
Results? Jeremiah Owyang, a great analyst at Forrester, reported the following results on his blog (his text, not mine):
The campaign was only live for 3 weeks, and there were 59,100 sweepstakes entries. (success was deemed at 10k, this clearly moved beyond that)The visits (I don’t know if they were unique or repeated) were 11,642,051 for the bite page, and 17,652,567 for the stats page (I believe these are part of the interactive experience of the game.
This time Sony clearly got it right. They leveraged a pre-existing community and an app that had already proven its worth to consumers.
So should you make your own widget or other app? Perhaps, though perhaps you should consider sponsoring an existing one instead. But again, getting the counsel of a company that has social media in its DNA is critical. You can’t wing widgetry or widget sponsorship.
Widget Advertising: A couple of companies are offering graphical and text ads on their networks of widget applications. Generally this is a REACH play, cheap tonnage. There is a role for that for some brands. My understanding is that CPMs are running in the $2-$3 range, which is good eatin’ these days. You can target by site and by some demo info,as well as activity level on FaceBook.
Interestingly, one can also advertise widgets in these widget ad networks, which could really grow your install base if your app is any good. Here are a couple of examples I found on either widget network sites or on the Widget Summit website.
Vortex: Vortex is a modular app developed by Catalyst client Real Time Matrix that I will be talking about in Monday’s post. Their offering is really more than a widget, it’s a communication platform not limited to FB or even the web.
What is different about Vortex is that it is essentially a more serious application – no vampires here. It delivers real time content related to a particular topic to the user’s desktop or pages on Facebook, iGoogle, or Netvibes. Video, audio, text, all linked to their original locations online. A number of publishers have adopted this platform already, and brands are beginning to as well. It really is worth a look and I will provide more info Monday.
I make no bones about my professional interest in this platform, but my personal interest in its value for a brand is genuinely quite strong. So look to tomorrow’s post, or visit VortexMe if you can’t wait.
OH, AND MAJOR PROGRAMS
Major Programs: So here’s the one some of you are waiting for. There are lots of brands that don’t have the people resources to make events and participate in groups and buy key words. FB is certainly willing to build a program for a large budget that involves any combination of the above or maybe custom tools. My understanding to large is $300K+.
SOME FINAL THOUGHTS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Justin Smith, the creator of a wonderful site called InsideFacebook, offers a veritable catalogue of marketing methods and specific details on his site. Far more than the topline I have provided here. His comments are particularly relevant for brands who embrace the concept of guerilla marketing, whereas I try to focus solely on the needs of giant brands. But no matter how big or small you are, you owe Justin’s site a visit. He's got plenty for big brands as well.
I am indebted to his willingness to provide such info to the world on his pages because it allowed me to enrich the content in this post, and set me straight on two misconceptions I was under.
Also, I want to say that many traditional marketers will be put off by the number of options and the seeming complexity of directions you can go on FB. Actually, it may really frighten you to know that there are a number of OTHER tools that I didn’t mention above.
There’s no one standard executional platform like a :30 TV ad. But the beauty of that is you get to develop a program that is PERFECT for your situation.
Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.
Widget ads don't have to be tonnage. Tey are targetable.
ReplyDelete