FreshNetworks Blog

Image courtesy of David Armano

Facebook Places launched in the US last week laying claim to three major features:

1. It will allow users to share where they are with their friends.
2. It will allow users to see who is near them.
3. It will allow users to discover new places around them.

As a social media agency we’re always interested in what these developments could mean for marketers, so here are 5 ways in which marketers could potentially make use of Facebook Places:

1. Reach extension

Given that, by default, Places checkins will automatically go to a users profile and news stream (unless the privacy settings are adjusted) places can extend reach for marketers.

Not only will people be able to discover new areas or locations through Places itself but when people checkin from a venue they are broadcasting their presence at that spot to their entire Facebook network.

2. Advertising

As emarketer points out, Marketers want to reach consumers when they are close to making a purchase. Places will enable them to deliver a  targeted advert when consumers are at the point of decision.

This is very powerful as companies will be able to work out what consumers are interested in and deliver helpful advertising and compelling offers before consumers type a query into a search engine.

If ads can be pushed to people the moment they are engaged with something, rather than waiting until they take action and start a search, the ads become extremely powerful and can drive sales.

3. Location promotion

Yes this is a bit of an obvious one. But with around 1.5 million business pages on Facebook, businesses with an existing Facebook page can merge that page with their Places page by “claiming” it, or letting Facebook know that the business belongs to them.

Once it has been verified by Facebook, every time someone checks in from that location the business will inadvertently receive exposure from the check in.

4. Discounts and offers

Tom Bedecarre, CEO of AKQA, suggests that while Foursquare popularized the gaming aspect of checking in from physical venues (where people become “Mayors” for example), rewards could develop to become vouchers, coupons or some other type of discount  (eg, first 50 people to checkin at our coffee house get a free muffin).

With this in mind, Facebook Places could eventually be used as a way of distributing discounts and offers to people within a certain proximity. This would have the added bonus of putting an offer in front of someone when they’re in a place that allows for an immediate transaction.

5. Data

The data that you can collect on Places users and the number of times they checkin  could prove valuable in tracking customer activity, consumer personas and, indeed, competitor activity.

Also if people checkin to a certain venue or business and then leave any tips, advice or comments  then this information will be useful feedback for businesses.

It will be interesting to see how things develop with Facebook Places over the next few months, especially when it is eventually rolled out to other countries other than the USA.

Guest blog post written by Andrew Rayner, founder of internet marketing agency e-mphasis.

The phrase “Multi-channel” has been a buzz word for some time now in the retail sector and this has led to 3 main changes in the market:

1. With e-commerce capabilities accessible to even the tiniest of single-store independent retailers, the ability to shop across different channels has become almost universal.
2. The consumer has became more confident shopping across channels (e.g. researching online and then purchasing in store,  or reserving online and then collecting in store) and is becoming increasingly demanding about their online  shopping experience.
3. The use of social media means that consumers are no longer relying on the brand’s own marketing messages to make key purchasing decisions – they are looking to “people like them” (ie, other customers) to help make decisions.

Typically retailers have been working on a multi-channel strategy that ensures customers who already shop with them get the expected brand experience at every touch point. There has been little regard for those who have not yet committed to any one specific retailer or store. So what is the best way to capture these prospective customers?

The answer is to apply  multi-channel retail thinking to search and social media marketing. This means providing access to all channels from the moment when consumers start searching for products and services online, enabling the retailer to present a comprehensive search result to consumers that satisfies their exact requirements.

And with the consumer leading the purchasing decisions of their peers and influencing purchases through social media channels like Twitter, Facebook and product ratings and reviews, retailers need to ensure they also tap into the social media as part of their multichannel strategy.

One approach to this could be to use Google Places Optimisation (GPO). GPO works for retailers because it returns results for location based searches. In excess of 43% of all Google searches return a local result and so the opportunity for businesses with multiple locations is phenomenal.

GPO also provides a great opportunity for multi-channel retailers as it can link to a retailers transactional website, and if that website allows it, the complete customer journey, from search to basket, can be tracked. It can also provide all other relevant information to the customer, including contact details, opening hours and even information like parking facilities or food outlets. Google Places will also contain that all-important consumer review and feedback information – a vital feature of the consumer decision making process in the age of social shopping.

Effective GPO will not only save SEO and PPC costs, but will also deliver more relevant impressions and enable retailers to leverage social media more effectively. And as most consumers searching the web for a product or service are often not brand loyal (yet), they do not have a destination store in mind. But by using GPO as part of your multichannel search strategy you will put all routes to market in front of shoppers who are actively looking to buy.

As social media is still regarded as a new form of marketing and engagement, lots of companies seem to be more comfortable “trying out” social media as a one-off campaign.

Social media campaigns are an attractive proposition as they can generate a lot of buzz and excitement and are usually the basis for a lot of the social media case studies you will find on the web.

Even though we’re a social media agency, here at FreshNetworks we don’t just focus on campaign work; we also look at long-term engagement through a sustainable social media strategy.

In our experience, social media campaigns are perfect for raising awareness on a short-term basis. They’re also a great way of getting exposure for brands, companies or products that might not be that well known, or have fallen from favour in some way.

Campaign work is high impact but due to the cost and resource involved it’s not good for driving value over a long period of time.That’s not to say that campaigns should be disregarded completely. In fact, they are very effective when used alongside a sustainable engagement strategy.

Campaigns generate the high level of buzz that brands so desire. However, if there is a long-term strategy for engaging with the people who have come across your brand or product as a result of the campaign then the impact won’t drop off once the campaign has finished. Using campaigns as part of a wider social media strategy will help you build awareness and drive value over a longer period of time.

In order for a sustainable engagement strategy to succeed it must be set up with the needs of both the company and the user in mind. The reason why single, one-off social media campaigns are often favoured by brands is that engaging with people on a long-term basis takes time and effort. You need to build up relationships and develop trust with your audience. However, it’s worth the time and effort as ultimately the people you engage with will become a valuable asset to your company.

The video below from Richard gives a brief summary about our approach to social media campaigns and sustainable engagement:

Image courtesy of Todd Barnard

As a social media agency we’re always interested in what makes people interact and engage with brands online.

We’ve already written about why people follow the UK’s top brand on Twitter, and a recent report from ExactTarget builds on this analysis  further by revealing why people follow companies on the popular microblogging site.

Here are the top 5 reasons why people follow brands on Twitter:

1. To get updates on future products

38% of respondents said that they use Twitter to get updates on future products or new product developments.

From a brand’s perspective, this shows that Twitter is a useful PR tool for creating buzz around a new product launch. It would also work well for innovative companies who continuously update their offering or for FMCG businesses where new products are frequently launched.

2. To engage with the company or brand

32%  of respondents said they wanted to stay informed about the activities of a company or brand, with a further 20% stating they become  followers to interact with, share ideas and provide feedback about services or products.

From a brand’s point of view, this proves the value of Twitter as both a customer engagement and customer feedback tool.

3. To save money

Saving money seems to be another key motivator for people to follow brands on Twitter. 31% of respondents said that they follow a company to receive discounts and promotions. A similar percentage of people also hoped to get “insider” information about upcoming sales, discount events and free samples.

This means that businesses could use Twitter to feed out discount codes and coupons in order to encourage brand loyalty and drive sales.

4.  For entertainment

For 26% of the people surveyed, following brands on Twitter was simply for entertainment and no other reason.

With this in mind, perhaps brands and businesses need to evaluate the way they engage people through Twitter and include more fun, interactive content, like videos and pictures, rather than just a news and updates, in their Twitter stream.

5. To display loyalty

23% of people surveyed said they follow brands or companies to show support. In other words, it is to show their loyalty to others.

For a brand or business, this type of user could be a key influencer and, as a brand advocate, if you engage them in the right way they will help spread positive word-of-mouth about your products or services.

It would be interesting to know why you follow brands on Twitter.

Image courtesy of sudeep1106

You may have seen Cadbury’s new spots and stripes underwater advert. It’s the one that starts off a little like a high-resolution marine screen saver but then develops into something that resembles a mini film.

If you have watched it, did you know what it was advertising? Or did you have to follow the call-to-action at the end of the ad and visit the website URL to find out what the hell was going on?

This new campaign by Cadbury really seems to recognise something that we’ve said before -  social media doesn’t just take place online. Their advert is incomplete without referring you to their social media site (www.spotsvstripes.com). And this site would not stand alone and be as successful without the advert driving people to it.

As an official sponsor of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the thinking behind the current Cadbury campaign is to  split the nation into two teams, the spots and stripes, to compete in game play in the lead up to London 2012. All people need to do is join one of the teams by signing up on the website to begin scoring points for their chosen team.

Cadbury will encourage people to engage with the Spots v Stripes site through dedicated social media channels, like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, in combination with more traditional marketing methods  like TV and outdoor advertising in keeping with their online/offline theme. And while the site definitely plays on social gaming interaction, you can score points for offline games like running or crazy golf and can also download games from the site to play offline.

Perhaps the key sales driver for Cadbury from this whole campaign will be the introduction of a brand new product – the Challenge Bar. The Challenge Bar is a milk and white chocolate bar divided into three sections; one spotty, one stripy and one chunk in the middle which the Spot and the Stripe must play for.

The launch of this new chocolate bar will be supported by traditional offline marketing, but each Challenge Bar has one of 20 different games printed on the inside of the wrapper to get consumers playing for the “winners” chunk and driving people online to claim the points for their chosen team. The campaign will also see Cadbury touring the country in order to get the whole of the UK involved with both the Cadbury and olympic games, and, more than likely, promote the Challenge Bar.

Given that the campaign only launched last week, it remains to be seen whether this fully integrated offline and online  campaign will really take off. What is interesting to see though is that Cadbury has recognised that offline is converging with online – something that all digital marketers need to be aware of.

Read more of our Social Media Case Studies

We’ve written previously about the value of social shopping and how it can benefit online retailers,  and it seems that the issue of social commerce has risen to the forefront of e-commerce strategy discussions again.

Social commerce involves the use of social media, in the context of e-commerce, to assist with buying and selling products and services online. It includes features like customer ratings and reviews, user recommendations and referrals, social shopping tools and online communities.

While social commerce has existed for some time now, with brands like Dell claiming to have made $6.5m (£4.2m) from computer sales via Twitter since 2007, social commerce has become a major point of strategic discussion for online retailers again because of 2 reasons:

1. Facebook announced it will shut down the Facebook Gift Shop next month in order to prepare for the launch of its virtual currency,  Facebook Credits, possibly as early as September. Facebook Credits will initially allow users to pay for virtual goods such as games, but will eventually let them buy anything. It is expected that Facebook will take a 30% cut of all transactions.
2. FMCG giant Procter & Gamble (P&G) has started selling its Max Factor brand cosmetics through Facebook .

Michael Nutley, editor-in-chief of New Media Age, rightly points out in his Marketing Week article that these two approaches to social commerce take social media a step further by bringing the ability to purchase what’s being talked about on the social network within the network itself.

Etailers are more than aware of the fact that every page they ask customers to click through to results in a drop-off in numbers of people who convert, so the strategy employed by P&G is a clever one in that it brings the checkout to the potential customer, rather than the other way round.

It’s this ease of purchase, in combination with the persuasive buzz and consumer-driven product discussions that will have been generated on the social networking site, that’s likely to increase sales.

So is social commerce the future of e-commerce? Will etailers move more towards using Facebook or their own branded online communities as a direct space for selling products? It would be interesting to hear your thoughts.

We’re full of excitement as our co-founder, Caroline Plumb, is off to India with David Cameron as part of a UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) delegation to promote UK exports and investment in India.

As Caroline will be representing a social media agency, she will be promoting the use of  social media technology for businesses – an area  in which the Indian business community seem to have already made good headway.

Caroline’s invitation to join David Cameron’s delegation to India is an exciting prospect given that India has topped a recent survey about businesses who use social media for new customer acquisition.

The survey, commissioned by workplace solutions provider Regus, revealed that 40% of businesses around the world have successfully leveraged social media for new business development.

India topped the chart for the country with the highest percentage of companies using social media for new customer acquisition, followed by Mexico and then Spain. Rather surprisingly, only 35% of US companies and 34% of Canadian companies have successfully leveraged social media to develop new business:

• India – 52%
• Mexico – 50%
• Spain – 50%
• Netherlands – 48%
• China -  44%
• South Africa – 43%
• Germany – 41%
• Australia – 41%
• USA – 35%
• Canada – 34%

With 67% of companies in India also using professional social networking to source information about new customers, clients or competitors, compared to the global average of 54%, it seems that Indian businesses are leading the way in implementing a social media strategy that successfully helps with new business development.

Business leaders in each country were also asked whether they believed that social media was an effective enough marketing channel to be awarded its own portion of marketing budget. More than a quarter of businesses worldwide confirmed they have set aside a proportion of marketing budget specifically devoted to social media activities, proving the benefits of social media for commercial organisations.

More about David Cameron’s India trade mission

David Cameron will be accompanied to India by six Cabinet members and around 60 CEOs, including Michael Queen of 3i, Philip Dilley of ARUP, Andrew Moss of Aviva, John Varley of Barclays,  John Griffith-Jones of KPMG, Graham Mackay of SABMillar and Vittorio Colao of Vodafone, as well as our very own Caroline. You can see the full list at the link below.

Foreign Secretary William Hague, Chancellor George Osborne and  Business Secretary Vince Cable are also among the British government representatives travelling to India.

Read more about David Cameron’s UKTI delegation to India.

Habbo, the world’s largest teenage online community, has recently celebrated its tenth birthday, proving that sustainable success can be achieved with online communities.

The first version of Habbo was rolled out in August 2000, followed by an English-language beta version in January 2001. Ten years on, Habbo (previously known as “Habbo Hotel”) has a staggering 176 million registered users, with 15 million unique visitors per month.  In the UK alone it reaches 15% of the total teenage audience and receives more than 1.1 million unique visitors per month.

So what lies behind Habbo’s success?

Timo Soininen, the Chief Executive of Habbo’s parent company, Sulake, has said that Habbo’s continuing success is down to keeping “the service fresh and relevant by frequently introducing new features and gaming elements, arranging engaging campaigns, enriching the virtual economy and payment models and nurturing the community.”

What Soininen seems to be saying is that the Habbo community continues to thrive because of careful, considered online community management and innovative content. Keeping up with cutting edge social and digital trends helps to keep the young audience engaged.

It’s likely that Habbo also benefits from Sulake’s expertise, as the social entertainment company often carry out in-depth market research, listening and analysis to gain insights into the the needs of its audience and to understand the type of material they will engage with. This is probably also the reason why social gaming and social entertainment is a key driver in shaping and developing the community.

Some of Habbo’s success can also be attributed to the intelligent joint marketing activities it has carried out with teen-friendly consumer brands like Cheetos, or, more recently Capri-Sun, where on-pack advertising encourages consumers to visit Habbo.co.uk where they can access ‘The Capri Sun Summer Theme Park’ branded room.

Habbo has also entered partnerships with media brands such as MTV and Myspace, helping to promote the site amongst its key target audience. And with Habbo’s own annual survey of 49,000 teenage users proving the claim that 32% of teenagers would never pay for content online, the fact that membership to Habbo is free is an additional way of enticing teenagers to sign up.

And the community continues to grow as these statistics from June 2010 show:

• 172 million avatars created
• 3 million new characters created each month
• 120 million user-created rooms
• Average user session lasts 42 minutes

Read more of our Social Media Case Studies

Image by Ivan Walsh via Flickr

With digital marketing becoming an increasingly important part of  brand strategy, more and more “traditional” agencies are employing experienced digital marketers to ensure they win online briefs by providing clients with services that span across all marketing mediums.

However, when it comes to social media, still a relatively new part of digital marketing, is it best to employ a specialist social media agency to focus on developing and implementing an in-depth social media strategy, or is it better to look for  a one-cap-fits-all agency to provide all your marketing, advertising and digital needs?

According to Marketing magazine, brands  need to reconsider how they organise their digital activity given its increasing importance as a marketing channel.

Paul Troy, the global head of advertising and content at Barclaycard, has suggested that he will be looking for one agency to work across  all marketing activity. Perhaps he feels marketing and advertising efforts will be more joined up if he pursues just one agency. It’s likely this approach will also save him money and potentially give him more control over the agency, as the financial loss to the agency if they loose a large, cross-channel account is much greater then just a single project or campaign.

On the other hand, lots of brands, like Honda and Toyota, are sceptical about big, “jack of all trades” agencies because of their inability to keep up with digital developments, especially when it comes to social media. Toyota, for example, use specialist agencies for each marketing discipline as they feel that above-the-line agencies often focus on TV ideas first and foremost and digital doesn’t fit naturally into their strategic thinking.

So when it comes to employing agencies, in particular specialist agencies like a social media agency,  what’s the best way forward? Getting specialist agencies to work together across marketing briefs could be one way of addressing gaps in experience and knowledge while still ensuring joined up thinking across the board. Agency partnerships of this kind would also allow clients to consolidate their marketing supplier base, potentially saving costs and reducing time trying to source the correct agency for each task.

At the moment though it seems there is no definitive answer about the approach that brands and businesses should take to employing agencies.  The decision really depends on the key strategic aims of the business.

The landscape for both multi-channel and specialist agencies (particularly social media agencies) is changing fast and the best advice for brands looking for agency help is to identify the expertise that can develop and implement a strategy that will achieve key targets rather than think about the type of agency you are hiring.

Read another post about the benefits of a specialist social media agency.

Last week Charlie and I spent a lot of time discussing the best way for businesses to embrace social media.

We looked at the pros and cons of using  a campaign-based approach to social media, where brands go for a one-off viral success, opposed to a more sustained, long-term social media strategy to enable businesses to build ongoign engagement through social media and begin to embed it in their processes rather than using it as a tool to support one campaign.

So should businesses jump in and use social media right now and be the “early bird” (who gets the worm), or is it better to wait, like the “second mouse” (who gets the cheese), and think about what you want to do with social media before rushing in? Charlie’s thoughts on this are captured in the video below:

As this is a new blog post style for us it would be great to hear your thoughts not only about the content, but also whether we should do more FreshNetworks videos in the future. (I know one thing I need to improve is the lighting – Charlie looks a little orange in this video!).