I like online marketing and I like to understand the habits of consumers. I have been in E-Commerce since the year 2000 and I have seen many ways to attract customers. With our project www.divaloca.es, we have tried different mechanisms to achieve fans and subsequently sales on Facebook. In this post, I summarize our experience. In 2 years, we got over 70,000 fans.
Prior to e-Commerce, the consumer received a catalogue and he placed an order via telephone, fax or traditional mail. During the early days of e-Commerce and traditional e-commerce thinking, we would build a webshop, buy keywords on search engines to advertise our products, generate online orders and ship them out.
In the second wave of e-Commerce models, the customers signed up to a private sales club or a coupon site, received over 100 emails daily with aggressive offers from the webs he subscribed to and placed an order.
Today’s online shopper is much more sensitive to the buying process and online advertisement. A merchant can no longer simply buy keywords and hope to drive sales. Further, the consumer is tired of all the mail influx in his inbox with constant “Best Offer Deals”. The consumer today has the option to receive exactly what he wants simply by becoming a fan of the page of a store, a product or a brand that interests him.
What does this mean for you, the Marketing Director of your e-commerce company? Well, you have to understand that the consumer who is a fan of your page is someone who has an interest in what you communicate, but who has the freedom to unsubscribe and not be a fan if you bombard him with illogical, penetrating and incoherent posts.
So how can we make a good Facebook capture strategy that maximizes the ROI invested in fan recruitment?
The key is to get a healthy mix of posts that encourages the consumer to follow your page and recommend it to your friends.
This is how I classify the posts:
Push Sale
The classic: product, price, promotion. “Push Sale” posts are most effective when they contain an offer impossible to refuse. We only show to our own fan base. We exclude the public and friends of fans limiting the reach of these special offers to our current base. This adds a perceptual value to your Push Sale posts. But remember, don’t over use them. You risk tiring your consumers.
Example:
In this example, we promote a special price of a bike we carried in stock. We communicate the price and a good product description.
Passive Sale
Subliminal sales: you involve your client asking him to send you pictures of what he has bought (works very well with emotional products). Post with product images sent in by existing customers boost your credibility and gives a lot of emotion to your product. Do not forget to post the price and link to the product page in your shop with this post. It is usually the post that best converts. This type of posts can be repeated with high frequency, it does not tire your fan base. You publish this to your fans and their friends.
Example:
In this example, a customer sent in a bike he built with one of the frames he bought from us.
Non-Sale Viral
A Non-Sale Viral does not drive sales, it is posted just to make viral noise (likes and shares). Humor always helps. You publish this without segmentation to Fans, Friends of Fans and the Public.
Example:
This post advertises a new bike carriage for camels worth 399€. It mentions that the post does not include the camel or the installation of the carriage.
Stats: Reach of 133888 people / Likes 2506 / Shares 622
Transparency – Behind the scenes
The e-Commerce consumer has no clue what happens behind the scenes of an e-Commerce operation. He has no idea about all the effort put into delivering an order. He does not know that we select, negotiate, photograph, describe, price, store and advertise the product. The consumer doesn´t know that we attend to emails; pick and pack the order; manage a complex warehouse operation; and engage in a complex delivery process. All he sees is the package being delivered at his doorstep.
The consumer values a lot if you as a company are transparent. That is why I frequently publish internal things, improvements in the company, new members of the team, etc … to show the consumer that behind everything there is a great process led by humans who engage in a complex process cycle to get the order delivered to the buyer. This type of posts should only be targeted to the existing fan base.
Example Post:
In this post, we announce that we are improving the warehouse. We give the company a human touch.
Transparency – Elogy
If we are proud of something, if we feel that we have done something well, we must communicate it. I always communicate anniversaries, awards or new achievements (we are already 20k fans, we are 25k fans, we are already 30k fans, etc …). This encourages the relationship of your brand with your customer. This kind of post I post it to my fans and friends.
Example:
Company 2 year anniversary post describing the accomplishments in the 24 months of operations.
Subliminal Sale – Emotion
With this post, you create a branding and an emotional link with an event related to your web that is developing at that time. You get the consumer to want to live the same experience (and tell you where you can buy all the material on your website). I post it for my fans and friends.
Example:
Here we show a customer who is doing the Transamazonica route in South America with a bike purchased at our store, wearing our branded clothing. Direct association of brand, quality and adventurous emotions.
The draw
The draw is obviously the best way to capture new fans. But if you raffle something, it should encourage virality: I always tell the fan that his registration is only valid if he does CLICK and SHARE. Very important: the higher the prize value, the more viral the draw. I publish this post to fans and their friends.
Example:
Now that we have defined the different types of posts, how do I define my budget? This depends a lot on what you want to achieve. Attached is the distribution of the budget that I used to capture the 70,000 fans, dividing it into two segments: Viral and Sales
This graph shows the effectiveness of the typology of posts for the creation of virality. Obviously, the draw is the one that pulls the most; But what is surprising is to see the typologies that appear in the 2nd and 3rd places (keep in mind when publishing).
Below you can see the effectiveness of the posts aimed at generating sales:
We captured the 70,000 Fans in DivaLoca with a budget of less than € 10,000, and this serves to remind you of a very important KPI that with high probability you do not have in your internal marketing reports yet:
CPF -> Cost per Fan
You should consider the value of a fan higher than the value of an email lead. The fan CHOOSES to receive your information, INTERACT and SHARE, something your email leads cannot do. That’s why you should not be afraid to have a higher CPF than the CPL.
Happy on getting feedback on this article and learn from you about your experiences in social media marketing.