For an individual, Facebook is relatively simple, or at least as simple as you want it to be.
However, for a big brand, Facebook can and probably should be used a lot more cleverly. Since opening up to allow the creation of bespoke pages, the platform offers brands a huge number of possibilities. This means companies have the potential to offer their fans a far richer fan page/group, keeping members more interested and engaged.
Why should brands care? Well, Facebook is a captive audience. From my experience, once you’ve successfully attracted a fan to your page the drop-off rate over time is actually very low. If you’re a brand and people take the time to become your fan then you have to do something pretty bad for people to actually take the choose to leave. So once attracted to your page, you have the opportunity to engage your fans with branded content and product initiatives. In terms of generating new sales, this will depend on your company and strategy, however, it may well be that positive interaction on the page sways the individual to your product at point of sale.
Of course, there’s also the advantage of the price… free! So the next time you pay for an ad campaign which lasts 2 weeks, and then costs the same again next month, just think if you had converted these people into fans of your Facebook page instead – free outreach to many engaged advocates from then on. Which brands do well? Here are a few examples;
adidas Originals
Overall the use of the adidas Originals page is very good, one part in particular is brilliant — the Your Area tab. This tab is geographically created, meaning that people in England see adidas products and events targeted to them, and people in Japan see different products and events targeted to them and so on. A great tool, enabling adidas to keep its fan group integrated, whilst at the same time tailoring the experience to its global fan base.
Red Bull
Red Bull is one of the most innovative players when it comes to their Facebook offerings. They link up with all their sporting activity, enhancing the association of their product with sport, and in particular the more extreme sports. Their Facebook activity varies, at the moment they have a snowboard game embedded on the site, a ‘twitterfall’ tab showing tweets from all the sports people they sponsor, and the Red Bull Stash tab – a bespoke page for a pan-USA treasure hunt for Red Bull. Great fan interaction and user generated content.
Posted: December 16, 2009 @ 2:58 pm