Facebook Contest Question

[malinda.terreri]

Does anyone have any feedback on the effectiveness of adding an incentive to like a facebook page? I can see the short-term benefit, but I'm wondering what the long-term engagement rate is with people who have been acquired this way.

 

[ryanabbott]

I have tried for the past year to get more and more people to "like" our page. We are up to 452 fans but the one thing that I can take pride in is that they are actual "fans", or local people following what we do. These people are actual customers or will soon be (hopefully) actual customers. I have been solicited by a lot of vendors who can ramp up my social presence. They show me examples of dealers that have 100,000 fans and they can do all this and that for me. Of the 100,000, 99,996 of them aren't local and they just join for the fun and games. While I admit, this is nice, it just doesn't go after the market I want liking my page. I will get to my short term goal of 1,000 eventually and when I do it will be more rewarding!

To answer your question, I think it is great to have brand awareness in front of potential clients. If you keep your page active and full of useful content, people will take notice and you will have future success from it.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

That's always a question I ask myself Malinda.

One side of my marketing brain says to go after volume. Get the numbers posted, throw enough shit on the wall and see what sticks. Something has to stick.

The other (the dominate) side speaks quality over quantity. Build your list organically. Acquire and build your audience through true engagement and best practices

I would rather have 100 active and engaged followers that value our services and brand than 1000 followers that never engage and eventually drop off.

Quality over quantity.

 

[Jeff Kershner]

Something to add:

Building your list out organically...make use of a "Like tab" for new likers to your dealership page. On this page, list out what one average you post on your wall and maybe even the average frequency of your posts.

Why Like Us on Face Facebook? The WIIFM

If you post 3 times a day - tell'm
If you sometimes a sales promotion (only if its really good) - tell'm
If you always post the monthly service coupons - tell'm
If you post photos of your happy customers - tell'm

I'm working on this for my dealers right now so I hope to have an example soon to share.

 

[Joe_Castle]

Malinda, we have long taken the stance that it is the quality of fans that is critical for success, not the quantity. The top priority for an auto dealer should be to build their number of in-market fans and followers. Not only do in-market fans have the potential to become a customer, but their social network is going to be concentrated around where they live. So if they live in your market, so do the majority of their friends. This means there is a far greater chance your content will be relevant to their audience, and so they will be more likely to share or re-tweet your content. Since your fans’ friends tend to be in your market, their friends (friends of friends of fans) will also tend to be within your market, again, meaning a better opportunity for sharing relevant content. This is where the viral effect of social media really comes into play. Your content posts to even a small, local, quality audience can have a large effect, because it’s not simply the size of your audience that affects your reach, but the size of your local audiences’ reach beyond your immediate audience.

So if you are planning to offer an incentive to Like your page - use incentives that appeal to your local market. How about a gift certificate to a local restaurant, or local event? Another possibility is to donate to a local charity or non profit (the high school booster club?). Again, by choosing local organizations you will be more likely to appeal to people in-market. The alternative is giving away items that have mass appeal (how many iPad giveways can there be?) where you will get a lot more people to respond, but you are not targeting people that are in-market or who have the potential of doing business with you.

Building fans that are out of market means that promotions from your business are not relevant, to them and most of their friends, so the result is no sharing, no clicking, no response. Dealers who have this large fragmented audience only see clicks and sharing when they post generic content, such as a photo of a polar bear. While the polar bear may be cute, and may incite some fans to click or share, these are not actions that are going to generate new customers.

 

[davidmoon]

It's a slow cook to mine a customer from social media for dealers. Even in my absence, I doubt this has changed. Facebook does give you a better opportunity to connect with customers as a PR tool. While Twitter can be used to effectively connect with area businesses, keeping your brand top of mind.

If it's your company culture to initiate PR campaigns year-round, there are a lot of creative ways to attract likes and give people who like something to do, comment and share. If you are only looking for a quick ROI from the investment, something you can show on a monthly report, or bulk unqualified likes; you'll never be satisfied with your efforts.

 

[Dave Ferkler]

Try taking pictures of your customers or videos and having them talk to their friends as they are taking delivery. Let them know you will send them a friend request and tag them in the video or picture. If you make your page fun you will be able to engage potential new customers. If you put a 10% coupon up the only people whio will use it are people who would have come in anyway. Here are two video's that I did with customers that got some decent play.





And if your customer owns a business, tell them you will throw in a plug.

 

[malinda.terreri]

Thanks for all of the replies. I had run across a few companies with a facebook incentive marketing model and was curious if the shortcut was working but it sounds like good, old-fashioned "quality over quantity" is still the way to go.

 

[CitySteve]

Thanks for all of the replies. I had run across a few companies with a facebook incentive marketing model and was curious if the shortcut was working but it sounds like good, old-fashioned "quality over quantity" is still the way to go.

Malinda,

If I may offer some advice....you can run some great contests on Facebook with addons like Wildfire app. Wildfire allows you to make your own custom contest and have it run on your FB page and your website too.

To take it a step further, consider advertising on Facebook to target people to get involved in your contest. For example, you can run ads on Facebook only to show in your area and ONLY to those with certain interests. Let's say you run a contest to give away tickets to an NFL game, you could target fans in your area.

Using this and other strategies, we've built our base up to 10,000+ in the matter of a year. City Buick Chevrolet Cadillac GMC - Automotive - Toronto, ON | Facebook

 

[Derek Bess]

There are some tricks that you can use to increase your Facebook fan interaction. Many people may not like what I have to say, but I am getting targeted fans for pennies on the dollar right now. The idea behind what I have developed for my own personal account is in the realm of blind advertising with soft sales. I have created a blind motorcycle facebook fan page called "all about motorcycles" and I target Harley-Davidson Heritage Softail Classic owners. Why? Because I am vice president of a company who sells motorcycle saddlebag inserts and our flagship product is for H-D HSC owners. We did a lot of testing with our main companies Facebook account with contests and Facebook advertising, but we were just not getting the results we were looking for. In result, I decided to try a blind Facebook page that had more of a community feel to it. All about motorcycles is not branded or shows no affiliation with our company Leather Lid Inserts, in result we now have 920 fans within a matter of a month, we are not bidding per click, we are bidding per thousand impressions and our cost per fan is roughly around $0.12 and we've already made our money back with soft selling our products through the facebook fan page and people actually interact with our posts.

Personally, I believe that Facebook contests are a bit outdated right now and you try to think outside the box and do things that your competitors are not doing. Stand out from the crowd.