Seasoned Marketer

One of the newest trends online is for big brand companies to advertise on Facebook with giveaways where  if someone simply likes’ their company, they’ll be entered to win.  For example, Expedia is doing a giveaway promotion where 5 prize winners get a paid trip to South America.  To enter to win, all you have to do is ‘like’ Expedia on your Facebook page.

Giveaways and promotions are nothing new.  But the avenue for attracting new customers does seem like a new trend.  The big name companies recognize that to go where the people are, then social media outlets like Facebook are an important marketing channel.

It also points out what I’ve tested with my own sites, albeit on a much smaller scale than a JCPenny.  And that is that social media, like Facebook, doesn’t seem to convert as well into sales directly from Facebook.  That means that advertising on Facebook requires a different approach than ‘here’s my product, buy it’. These larger companies are using it to build brand.  And to setup a marketing channel for further contact essentially for free anytime they want to.

How so?  Because once a person ‘likes’ your company on Facebook, that does a couple of things.  It creates a minor viral wave in that friends community in which that company will get some more people ‘liking’ their company, just by association or word of mouth.  For example, one friend tells another friend they just have to ‘like’ Expedia to get a chance to win a trip to South America.   But secondly, it also allows the company, like Expedia, to send out ads anytime they want to by simply posting an article, an update, a video, a discussion group to their Expedia Facebook page.  And anyone who has ‘liked’ that company would get their ‘update’.

The potential problem I see with this approach is saturation.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve already turned off friends who post too much.  And people could simply turn off these businesses once the contest is over or if they get too many businesses thet they’ve liked.

I would suspect that at some point, people will become saturated on Facebook with companies and ads and friends who just post like crazy.  And that point, with a bunch of companies all competing for consumer’s attention through updates and ads, that will dramatically change the landscape of Facebook.

I think one way to prevent this overwhelm or overload would be for companies to post updates at entirely random and not too frequent intervals that offer something tangible for the Facebook user.  And to scale that so the average Facebook user could actually benefit from an update from a company.  For example, posting a status update that says “Free donuts for the next hour at our coffee shop with the purchase of a coffee or tea”.  Or “Get 2 extra toppings for free when you buy a medium or large Pizza by 2 PM” or perhaps “The Travel Company FB Lotto” where weekly or monthly we give away a free weekend getaway to a random location in the US”.  Or something along those lines.

Social media marketing is different than search engine marketing.  The customers are in an entirely different mindset.  That’s why these big companies are spending their money in ads building brand and not direct selling their products for the time being.

It does make me wonder what the next big thing will be?  Just a few years we hadn’t heard of Google, then we hadn’t even heard of Facebook, or Twitter, it does make one wonder where the next goldmine will pop up.

By the way over 330,000 people ‘like’ Expedia on Facebook.  And you better believe those ads Expedia is running are highly targeted.

Small businesses should be taking advantage of the online local marketing opportunities out there.  There are all sorts of choices, some free and some paid.

For example, Groupon.com is a deal site for local retail or service businesses.  Basically a small business puts up a special offer or deal on the site (like 50% off your first purchase) and then there is a time limit on how long the special is offered for.  The advantage of doing something like this for small businesses is abundantly clear.  You can generate more customers and generate buzz.  If I were a small retail biz, I would definitely be doing groupon.com and offer a loss-leader to help generate more clients, build brand, build word of mouth, etc.

The other example is Google Local.  This is a free service that Google offers that allows your business to be added to local listings.  Free exposure to highly targeted customers?  Uh yeah, that’s a no brainer.  Part of that system also includes customers that have reviewed your business and given it a star rating, like 5 stars or 3 stars.  And then actually written a review.  I can tell that the businesses that get the most reviews and the highest stars will get clicked on the most.

Now you don’t have to stop at local results.  If you have a retail store and an ecommerce store (which you should have – if you run a brick and mortar – you should be offering your product online and for online purchase), then you could check out something like SlickDeals.com.  This place allows you to place ads for special deals.

And the thing about all of these sites are that they get a massive amount of traffic.  And it’s extremely targeted traffic.  And 2 of them are free.

Of course, speaking of not free, then you should also have some sort of budget for advertising online via pay per click.  You can go with Google Adwords or Microsoft Ad center to help target your customers online in your local market.

Considering it’s been suggested that only 15 – 20% of the population actually knows what a feed is, I doubt few people know that you can make money from your feeds.

So first of all, when we are talking about feeds, we are usually talking about RSS feeds these days.  And all the blogs out there have the capacity for generate a ‘feed’.  A feed is a way to update any subscribers to your feed via the use of feed readers.

Let’s say you have a blog about Popular Musicians. And you post a new article about a band coming to your area.  What happens is that article updates your RSS feed and feed readers are often times setup to ‘check’ feeds every 15 minutes or so.  It’s kind of like email, except with blog content instead of  a personalized email.  And everyone who is subscribed to your feed will get that update via their feed reader.

There are 3 easy to use and popular feed readers out there.  Internet Explorer 8 has a built in feed reader, Firefox has a built in feed reader and I like feed demon – a free desktop feed reader.  You can easily to subscribe to a sites ‘feed’ if when you go to your favorite site and see that orange ‘feed’ icon. If you click on that, then you can subscribe to that feed.

Reading your feed is easy, for example, with IE 8, all you have to do is go to your “favorites’ and click on ‘feeds’ and you’ll see all the feeds you are subscribed to.

Now, if you have a blog of your own, or a site with an RSS feed, you can place Google Ads in your feed and you get paid anytime clicks on one of those ads.  Really, if you have a blog, it doesn’t make any sense not to use Google AdSense for feeds.  It’s a way to build passive income without much work on your part.

To learn more, login into your Google AdSense account and click on ‘Ad Setup’ and choose AdSense for feeds.  It’s actually pretty easy and straight forward to use.

This option has been around for a long time.  Except is used to be fairly expensive to buy the ad space.  However, you’d probably be pleasantly surprised by just how easy and affordable it is to advertise on late nite TV.  And on major stations, like MSNBC, HGTV, ESPN, etc. 

If you have a Google AdWords campaign, then you’re half way there.  All you need is a video and in your Adwords account, you can simply upload that video, choose which channels and what time you want your TV commercial to run and then you choose your budget and that easy you can be on TV.

This is a great video that is quite eye opening.  Keep in mind, in this example, they are still paying $1.30 per click (and who knows what kind of conversion he’s getting) but it’s certainly worth trying.

There might be a couple commercials to get through, but this video is worth watching.  The data is quite interesting.  Who knew it could be so cheap.  Look for a barage of websites coming to your late night channel.

Oh yeah, what channels can you run your own commercial on?  Just look at all the possibilites Google has partnered with – Run Commercials on these channels through Google

Actually we are working on a commercial now for one of our own sites and we will let you know what kind of conversion you might be able to expect…Coming Soon!