Can You Sell on Facebook?

Gap, J.C. Penney, Nordstrom, GameStop are all national brands that opened a “Facebook Store” only to close it within a year, as reported by a Bloomberg report.  The reason being seems to be that it wasn’t cost effective.  The high development costs with low sales has led each of these large companies to determine that Facebook is not an effective place to sell actual goods.

Are they wrong in thinking stores won’t work on Facebook? That’s not a simple yes or no.

First, you need to look at the limitations that a Facebook shop has, versus a traditional website.  Chances are, your online catalog is wider than 520 pixels.  It probably isn’t loading through an iframe, either, which means that it can render itself, without having to pass through Facebook’s structure, first.  In essence, that means it is framed to fit your screen, not a small window, and that it isn’t being restricted in its load speed.

Your own website’s online catalog, without question, is more effective in its presentation of your goods catalog. Anyone who thinks a Facebook store will be more effective than a dedicated site is gravely mistaken.

Does this mean that no commerce can happen in a Facebook App? Can it be a coupon-only model?  I don’t think so. The sales model simply needs to be different than an online catalog.

There have been effective fire sales, featuring a single product at a blowout price.  Understand that this does not guarantee a lot of return followers.  If accurately promoted, you can have a huge influx of fans, that leave after making the purchase, to never visit your page again.  If you are using a fire sale as a way of creating permanent excitement to your brand, you may be setting yourself up for failure.

One of the deciding factors that establishes whether it makes sense is price.  It can cost a lot of money to develop Facebook Apps.  Therefore, if you are spending a lot on creative, without a solid return on your investment, then the store fails.  It only makes sense if you have the ability to get a Facebook shop put together without having a large expense.

It all comes down to your goal, and the goal of the potential customer.  Most people aren’t on Facebook to buy things.  It’s that simple.  However, if you can create a deal for potential customers that is good enough for the customer to forgive the fact that the offer is automatically shared to their wall, and that caters to impulsive buyers, it is possible to have an effective sale on Facebook.  You can set up a highly effective sales process.  It needs to not set you back much to build, or it will be considered ineffective.  

A big retailer, like Nordstrom, would actually have a harder time setting up a sale like this, than a small business would. On a local level, Facebook stores may work, and well, but when it comes down to national style pages with huge catalogs, Nordstrom is probably right.  

Are you Green Marketing?

There are certain buzzwords in any industry that some find bothersome.  For example, the term, “Pre-owned” as a euphemism for used in the automotive business has always made me a little crazy.  A pre-owned car is new.  It hasn’t been owned yet, it’s pre-owned.  If it is simply previously owned by someone else that isn’t you, then it has been used.  

Now that I’ve got that out...

“Green Marketing” is one of those buzz terms for the advertising industry that gets to me in a similar way.  I’ve heard this term used in multiple ways, which probably adds to why it is so bothersome.  Some use it as a marketing badge of honor, as in “This company only uses 100% recycled material.” In other words, they are marketing the fact that the company is green.  Others have used it as a process by which they market, as in “We only want to advertise in non-print, energy efficient ways.” In this way, they are publishing their marketing in green ways.

Both are great ideas, that have been overdone in many cliche ways.  Images of your logo with leaves sprouting, or of hands gently cupping a growing tree, a recycling symbol superimposed over your logo, etc. have all been done a lot.  If you are trying to reach a new audience, these will most likely not work.

A customer’s willingness to do business with a specific brand or company has a hierarchy, with certain factors outweighing others.  For 99% of your customers, they are:

1. Perceived value.
2. Ease of obtaining/using product or service.
3. Environmental impact of brand/company.

In other words, a company needs to sell a product or offer a service that has the best value, with the easiest usage, first and second.  Although I list environment third, it’s a far third. In the mind of your customer, it’s most likely like this:

You correctly assumed the green slice is the environmental impact.

Unless your business is tied with your competition on the other two fronts, I wouldn’t suggest focusing a ton of marketing on the green front.  If your company is in need of some public relations messaging, or you are trying to wok on some brand loyalty, it can be useful, but as a tool to drive new business, it isn’t high on the recommendation list.

Social Media is Leading From the Middle

One of the more prominent leadership models you hear about recently is this concept of leading from the middle. This is usually compared to two other leadership strategies, such as leading from the rear, and leading from the front.  From the rear is like being a general in a battlefield, shouting orders of what you want done, without getting involved in the fray.  Leading from the front often times turns into being a micro-manager, charging forward to do everything yourself while your employees wait for you to do it for them.  Leading from the middle is hard, requires a lot of work, and that your team be in sync with both the short term and long term goals.

Social media is always, without fail, leading from the middle.

You simply cannot micro-manage social media, as one person cannot be truly “Social”.  You need a team of people. The good news is, you have a company, which has people.  You have a customer base that is made up of people.  That means there’s plenty of people that you need to communicate and interact with your company profile.  An enthusiastic employee base to start the exponential growth of your site, as your primary brand ambassadors, is essential.

Now, having a little bit of the old “General” style leadership, when it comes to getting the ball rolling, makes life a little easier.  If you have the authority to tell your people, “Since I haven’t shut off Facebook at work on the computers, and since we’re having this little contest going on our Facebook page, I’d appreciate it that when you’re on Facebook during work hours, on my dime, you participate a little...”

With that being said, if you think you can effectively create a social media experience that your employees and your customers take advantage of by leading from the rear, barking out orders, you are gravely mistaken.  You can’t order people to be social.  As soon as you try to command a lot of social interaction, your quality goes down the tubes, and you end up commanding mostly yourself.  At that point, you’re trying to micro-manage social, which we already said simply doesn’t work.
So, how do you effectively lead from the middle?  It starts by letting everyone involved, both internally in externally, know what you are hoping to accomplish.  Both internal and external clients need to have a reason to interact with you.  If they see the value in what you are hoping to achieve, then you can move forward.  There needs to be an incentive, whether it is intrinsic in the interaction itself or additional to it.

Then, you need to do it.

Here’s the tricky part.  If you cannot effectively run a social media campaign from the middle, because you have neither the time or the skill to do so, you’d better empower the person you have running it with some authority.  There’s nothing worse than a Content Producer sending out emails, begging people, “Can you please go on Facebook and help with our contest?” and being completely ignored, while the boss is saying to that same Content Producer, “Why aren’t you getting people to participate?”  We’ve seen those types of social media strategies.  They last around six months, end in complete failure, and propagate the idea that social media “Just doesn’t work.”

Are you ready to lead from the middle?

Flapping in the Wind: Pointless Banners

I was surfing through some different news blogs, and noticed some of the banner ads.  Obviously, I’m a little biased about the quality of ads; although none of them were as bad looking as the design above, there were some that came close.  What made many of these worse was where they pointed to, if they somehow managed to interest anyone enough to click them.

Free hint: a 404 page does not make the best target for your ad...

Tell me if this sounds familiar to anyone:  Conceptualize the end result first. (Otherwise known as, have a goal...)

Many times, it seems as though there is no concept for the banner ad’s use, other than whatever is on the actual banner.  Someone comes up with a great new marketing slogan, and an artist takes it and runs with it, and out of this creative medley comes a beautiful 728X90 ad that can only be summed up in one way: “Wow.”  This wonderful piece of art is uploaded onto an ad server, and it is linked to a homepage, and customers flood your site.  Once there, they poke around for a minute, maybe two, and your analytics for the month show an increase in two main areas: number of hits, and bounce rate.

Building your banner ads backwards, and starting with the goal first, then building the funnel to get to said goal, and finally ending with the banner ad, tends to have analytics that point to accomplishments, rather than simply traffic and bounce rates.

Directions we’d recommend:

• A landing page that allows the user to easily buy whatever goods or products the banner ad promoted.
• A landing page with useful information, a specific call to action, and tracking capabilities.
• A landing page with an interactive experience, like a game, that builds additional brand loyalty.

Note: All of these start with “Landing Page”.  None say, “Dump them on your homepage, and hope they find something that catches their eye.”

There’s a ton of different outcomes for your landing pages; we discussed three general ideas.  Feel free to brag about your accomplishments in the comment section below.

Google Analytics and Goals

Hey, at least we're not promoting word clouds as an analysis tool...

We talk about goals, a lot. Without having clear-cut goals, you never know if your business is truly performing to its full potential, and you cannot gauge progress. In the past, we’ve talked about how you should measure your goals. This time, we’re bringing in help to discuss measuring goals from an outside expert: Google.

Chances are, if you have a website, you’re running some form of analytics software on it. Google Analytics is free, and is continually improving. Currently, we would recommend using it over most paid alternatives, although it does require you to draw some of your own conclusions. The majority of the paid alternatives help you by interpreting the information, not by providing better information.

One of the great tools that Google Analytics has is the ability to set goals. When you have decided what you want your website to accomplish, you can set filters, and build funnels, to figure out what parts of your site are best suited to accomplish your goals. The fact that Google lets you set an imaginary dollar amount to the goal, so that you can use it to calculate the true ROI of your specific campaigns, is an excellent added benefit.

The ability to not only determine the number of people actively engaging with a portion of your site, but also to know how they got there, how long they stayed there, and at what point they bailed out of your sales process if they didn’t complete the process is priceless. If there was any way you could develop a tool that tracked people in your store the same way that Google Analytics tracks the average customer through your website, you would never lose a customer.

Some of the things that you can do is track out what the common keywords or key phrases that people are searching for that led them to your site. You can analyze which of these users become paying customers by putting assigning the correct goals, and you can further use SEO to streamline your business

And by the way, these analytics don’t stop on the desktop. There are analytic features that follow the mobile user, as well. Therefore, setting up some goals specifically for the mobile device is highly recommended. Using appropriate landing pages and funnelling the mobile user to complete the desired call to action is something that you should put a lot of energy into. Your mobile website needs to be a portal to completing a call to action, not simply a place to get information and go elsewhere.

If your idea of Google Analytics is simply a tool to see how many people come to your site a day, week, month, etc, then you aren’t using this extremely powerful tool correctly. Talk to your interactive marketing people today about how to use Goals and Google Analytics to increase sales and customer satisfaction. If you need additional help, we’re only a click away.