OK, so every social media "expert" in South Africa has built a Facebook page and/or group for their agency. Those who have real clients have even built pages for them. But how many examples are there where these pages have offered real marketing ROI?
It's something that we as an agency have been grappling with for a while, and if I'm to be honest, I still don't think we've got it right.
Ultimately a Facebook page is a permission asset much like an email database or even a blog with a consistent regular reader base. It gives the opportunity to build an ongoing relationship with a group of people who can then be leveraged in the future. The key to maintaining a permission based relationship is value. A relationship that isn't based on value will break, no matter what the spammers think.
In a way, offering value through a Facebook group is once again similar to Email Marketing: valuable content + targeted offers that people want to receive. If you get that right, most of the time you'll keep your listeners.
It should also be noted that Facebook offers more opportunity for interactivity within the group, but nothing that a community oriented website can't achieve apart from access to the immediate social network.
If you've been down this road, I'd love to know what you're doing to keep your Facebook fans genuinely interested. I think we're all learning here.
On another note, it's important to try and leverage one permission asset off another. The more channels you engage your customers through, the more entangled with your brand they are likely to be. At least that's what my gut says.
It was to this end that our smart client at BMW, Scott Gray, came up with the idea to hook up our email marketing engine to a Facebook app. This will allow users on Facebook to subscribe to the BMW newsletter as they would on the site. It just went live today - check it out.
It's by far the simplest Facebook app we've built, but potentially the coolest. Scott, thanks for the idea and John, thanks for making it a reality.
I think it's also worth adding that BMW SA are one of the very few South African brands who have managed to make good headway with their group. Now the challenge is keeping the members interested.
Quirk is a marketing agency. Born digital. Driven by creativity. Disciplined by results.
A blog on the convergence of marketing and technology from the minds of Quirk
Comments
Yes. agreed.
I think the only good thing about a page is to tap into the social network, however i wonder if a company based page is what you need.
It may be better to build a group, and almost squiddo like share private, valuable content as you say with the group members.
I think you may see more results in using something else, such as fb beacon in a email sign up page, than from a straight fb page.
Something to remember is the increasing lethargy due to appspam on fb.
s,weatingindurban
Smith, the first comment on the springwise post is really interesting.
the bit about seconf life or the bit about fairtrade chocolate...?
hey i have an idea, i will signup to the bmw newsletter in the virtual world and you folks send me a real X5 to throw around durban... kind of like a proof of concept!
yeah, the chocolate bit, never thought about it before
Yip, Fairtrade is something we should get here in SA, rather pay a bit more and know that the Tiger Brands of the world are not pillaging this land we live in.
Ease your conscience with your wallet, and actually the chocolate/coffee is surprisingly good!
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Hi Rob, interesting post. Well done on the app - nice and simple which is what I think FB needs. BMW has done a great job with the FB page - having an aspirational, sexy brand may play a role in that.
We've managed to build the Big Blue http://www.facebook.com/pages/Big-Blue/11528050943page to 52 people in two weeks - not great but it's steadily climbing. I've seen an increase in traffic and members when we've communicated a special offer or retail message. We've also incorporated quirky 'only in SA' themed RSS feeds to add personality.
We'll keep on plugging and see how it goes and will probably ask fans for more feedback so they can influence content more.
Posted by Melissa on 2008/02/26