Okay Nick, so you’re looking for the cold hard facts, dollars and cents benefits. This form of marketing is so new that I don’t know if any companies can yet provide the ROI of their pages. But, I again stress the fact that you get out what you put in. If you do your home work, understand your target audience and take the time to maintain your page you will see benefits, but if you simply create a page because it seems like the thing to do and then ignore it you wont see any benefit at all.
Mashable.com is a website on social media and it suggests the 5 best corporate Facebook pages are run by Pringles, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Adidas and Red Bull. I checked them out and I tend to agree with all but Adidas, which I didn’t enjoy in comparison to the others. I think the key with each of these pages is that they speak directly to their target audience and know what will bring consumers back to the page. Red Bull was particularly interesting. Apparently they have a phone number on their cans which you can call and leave a message on their answering machine. They then have a section on their page called Drunkish Dials where you can listen to some of the messages that have been left. Very interactive!
I also found an interview with Dan Austin and Lauren Hefferon, founder and director of Ciclismo Classico a bicycle vacation company. They spoke about the benefits their company has experienced since joining Facebook. The full article can be found at http://www.i-newswire.com/two-leading-adventure-travel-companies/13921 but I’ll briefly outline some of their experiences.
They report “that within a week on Facebook their fan following grew by over 300 percent… therefore boosting our brand awareness. We are seeing five to six percent growth in followers each day and close to 300 percent in the last week alone… It’s not so much a marketing tool as it is a communication tool. I keep coming back to the fact that conventional websites are one-dimensional; with Facebook it’s all three-dimensional.” As a result of Facebook they have seen an increase in hits to their website and believe that through posts they have come to better understand what their guests like, dislike and want. They have also detected which experiences guests find the most magical and have decided to shift future marketing onto these experiences.
So Nick I think it’s about time you find out for yourself. Join Facebook, check out the sites I mentioned above along with McDonald’s and Nike which I think have amazing pages. Start searching out some of you favourite or least favourite companies. Try Crayola Crayons which is a great example of what not to do. What do you think works and what doesn’t? Which pages would you go back and revisit regularly?
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