Beyond the Wall Post: Mastering Facebook’s Evolving Platform

Kendra Bracken-Ferguson | Digital Brand ArchitectsJune 29, 2012

“A brand might have millions of Facebook fans, but whether they’re engaged is a different story.”

“From Hi to Buy” in WWD Beauty; May 11, 2012

Success is a Choice: Effectively Activating Your Facebook Strategy

1. Get to know your customers 2. Analytics tell only half the story3. Your customers are not a commodity4. Smarter content = better reach,

engagement5. Supercharge marketing campaigns through

paid, owned and earned

1. Get to know your customers

It’s more about understanding how people behave through digital and travel through the ecosystem.

In an interview with Mashable in September, Oscar de la Renta CEO Alex Bolen said he expects Facebook “will become a major channel of commerce” for many brands. “Whether [Facebook] becomes one of ours depends on us developing products that are right for our brand and that channel of our commerce,” he added.

Ticketmaster users can import their social graph to the site which then tailors a concert list based on what they and their friends are listening to. When someone buys a ticket, they can share the info with their friends.

Whenever fans posted on Facebook about concerts they'd just bought, the company would see an average $5.30 more in ticket revenue, CEO Nathan Hubbard said.

"I want to go" and "I just bought tickets"

2. Analytics tell only half the story

Facebook limits the output of its analytics to focus on one side of the story: Your performance as a brand, which is helpful—but it’s only useful coupled with the ability to understand your audience

1. Take stock of what you can get from your platforms and Facebook and then combine your data points.

2. Empower yourself with the Open Graph 3. Don’t just rely on analytics; spend more time on analysis

The most valuable insights come from the contextualization of data, not the data content itself

3. Your customers are not a commodity

Humanize your brand: Users pick brands the same way they select friends: on integrity, friendliness, respectfulness, interesting interactions and trust

For Bobbi Brown, a brand that has primarily relied on word of mouth rather than traditional advertising, its forays into F-commerce have been all about engagement rather than sales. Recently, it created a Facebook program called Bobbi Brings Back, where consumers in six markets (the U.S., U.K., Australia, Japan, Germany and Korea) could vote on which discontinued lipstick shade they wanted the brand to bring back

More than 40,000 votes were tallied, and the winning shade will be sold only via Facebook in October. “The point is not the revenue,” says Maureen Case, president of specialty brands at the Estée Lauder Cos. Inc. “The point is to engage with our consumers and show them how much we appreciate them and that we are listening. A brand might have millions of Facebook fans, but whether they’re engaged is a different story

4. Smarter content and campaigns = better reach, engagement

• Have an opinion and add value• Keep it short and include a call to action• Show, don’t tell—whenever possible• Listen and give people what they want• If you don’t know what resonates, ask--either

directly or through a poll, survey, etc.• Leverage 3rd party tools to provide added

intelligence around posting strategy

The Limited released a coupon for $15 off for any in-store purchases which generated $317,000 in sales and increased the Facebook fan base by nearly 28,000 fans in just three days

comScore found that within four weeks of seeing messages about Starbucks, fans and friends of Starbucks fans were 38% more likely to buy Starbucks coffee. Likewise, a test with Target fans and their friends suggested they were 27% more likely to make buy at the retail giant

5. Supercharge marketing campaigns with paid, owned and earned media

“We are evolving from ads to stories. Ads come from anyone at anytime. Stories come from people and things that you’re connected to.” Facebook’s Director of Global Business Marketing, Mike Hoefflinger

‘Featured stories’ are amplified page updates linked to users’ social graphs, with their friends and other fans actions driving recommendation and therefore effectiveness These are not ‘ads’ in any conventional sense of the word, but a new combination of brand conversation and word of mouth, irrevocably blurring the lines between paid, earned and owned media to the extent that the lines no longer exist

Facebook Exchange, a real-time bidding ad system where visitors to third-party websites are marked with a cookie, and can then be shown real-time bid ads related to their web browsing when they return to Facebook

THANK YOU!

Kendra Bracken-FergusonCo-Founder, Managing DirectorDigital Brand Architectskendra@thedigitalbrandarchitects.com@kendrabracken@therealdba