Facebook is widely perceived as a powerful marketing platform for small businesses in particular. In 2015 Facebook itself announced that it now had 2 million small businesses buying ads on its platform (Facebook for business, 2015). At the same time it was announced that 40 million small business had active small business Pages (Ha, 2015).

However, there are some issues and disadvantages that also need to be considered by small businesses before a creating a Facebook page. This blog aims to identify some of these key issues

The first of these being loss of control. Facebook was created with the purpose of encouraging people to share information through the use of photos, video clips and written posts, with the ultimate aim of keeping people in touch with one another. Although businesses have control over what is and what is not visible on their Facebook page, they are unable to stop other individuals posting negative information or accusatory comments about the business.

One such example was demonstrated when a baking company in Arizona was features in an TV episode of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. Gordon Ramsey ended up walking off the show resulting in the restaurant receiving a great deal of negative feedback on their Facebook page. The owners tried to react by posting a ‘rant’ against the abuse who were greatly damaging the businesses reputation, however the social media storm had already been detrimental to the business, resulting in the loss of many customers (Burn-Calander, 2013).

The second element a small business needs to consider is the cost of maintenance. The information on a business’ Facebook page needs to be constantly updated with useful and valuable information that keeps the customers engaged and up to date with the news of the business. This can prove to be costly for a business especially for small companies with limited budgets. A business needs to be innovative and in doing so be looking to upload videos, engage with their customers through interactive forums and create online contests. All of these require maintenance by a business owner, staff member or a social media advertising (McQuerrey, 2016).

Not all business have the in house capability to create a Facebook page themselves. If a business chooses to go down the route of using an external digital marketing agency to do this, the agency will provide limited on-going training to business partners, however, the average cost would be between $2,500-$5,000 (£1735- £3471) per month (Contentfac.com, 2011). This service also includes status updates and interacting with customers. However, it is unlikely that a small business would be able to afford this high social media budget just on a Facebook page, not to mention the costs associated with using other social media platforms to increase their brand awareness and sales.

A third disadvantage that many small businesses face when creating and maintaining a Facebook page is the issue of competition. It has become too easy for rival businesses to pose as ‘friends’ or ‘fans which allows them to gain access to a company’s content. Also, there are blogs online that instruct businesses and other users the most effective ways to ‘steal’ competitors Facebook fans, one of which is shown in the link below: (Kissmetrics.com, 2014).

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/steal-your-competitions-followers/

Facebook also has a feature called ‘Pages to watch’. Their updated tool will show a business several metrics relating to their competition’s Facebook activity, including the number of posts by page admins, number of fan interactions and a leaderboard of the five top-performing posts across all watched pages (Jacobson, 2014). Although this can be a positive for a small business as it can effectively allow them to monitor their competitor’s online activity, it can also be their downfall, as their competitors can use it to try and stay on step ahead.

A further disadvantage that a small business could encounter through developing a Facebook page could be not coming across as being appropriately professional. Facebook was originally created for casual sharing of information and this may not be aligned with the nature of the business. For example, Facebook is a perfect marketing tool for a business such as a nightclub or retail business. But if the business is one with a very professional element, such as an investment bank or a doctor’s office, care must be taken to develop and maintain a Facebook presence that reflects the corporate philosophy otherwise it could be detrimental to the company’s positioning in its marketplace (McQuerrey, 2016).

Finally managing, updating and making relevant a Facebook page as part of a digital marketing strategy can prove to be very time-consuming for small businesses. By way of example a business needs to be diligent about negative comments being made on its page to ensure that they instantaneously address and/or rebut any claims. Similarly, a company must quickly respond to any questions or suggestions posed by customers in order to ensure that a difficult question by one consumer doesn’t become a torrent of similar tough questions from others. Facebook is up and running 24 hours a day and posts and threads can accumulate very quickly making it an important matter for businesses to manage these comments and ensure they the business come across in the best possible light. As this task is can take up a lot of time it could become a requirement to designate an employee strictly to social media duties, which might not be realistic for a small business with a limited social media budget.

References:

Burn-Calander, Rebecca (2013). “The Top 10 Corporate Social Media Disasters”. Business Insider. N.p., 2013. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.

Contentfac.com. (2011). How Much Does it Cost to Outsource Social Media Marketing?. [online] Available at: http://www.contentfac.com/how-much-does-social-media-marketing-cost/ [Accessed 24 Apr. 2016].

Facebook for Business. (2015). Thank You. [online] Available at: https://www.facebook.com/business/news/two-million-advertisers [Accessed 30 Apr. 2016].

Ha, A. (2015). Facebook Says There Are Now 40M Active Small Business Pages. [online] TechCrunch. Available at: http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/29/facebook-40-million/ [Accessed 30 Apr. 2016].

Jacobson, B. (2014). How ‘Pages to Watch’ from Facebook Can be a Source of Competitive Insight : Social Media Examiner. [online] Socialmediaexaminer.com. Available at: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-pages-to-watch/ [Accessed 24 Apr. 2016].

Kiss Metrics. (2014). How To Steal Your Competitor’s Social Media Followers. [online] Available at: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/steal-your-competitions-followers/ [Accessed 24 Apr. 2016].

McQuerrey, L. (2016). The Disadvantages of Facebook as a Marketing Tool. [online] Yourbusiness.azcentral.com. Available at: http://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/disadvantages-facebook-marketing-tool-2074.html [Accessed 22 Apr. 2016].

Webster, L. (2016). The Disadvantages of Using Facebook for Business Needs. [online] Smallbusiness.chron.com. Available at: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/disadvantages-using-facebook-business-needs-38685.html [Accessed 24 Apr. 2016].

What makes for an effective personalised email marketing campaign?

Personalised email marketing is a proven success for many businesses that want to improve their online advertising/marketing with one study showing that developing a good personalised email campaign can result in a 14% uplift in sales (EConsultancy, 2014). Email still remains the most powerful personalised channel of communication in the business world (78%), which makes it vitally important for most businesses to have an effective personalised email marketing strategy (Kanda, 2015).

However, to counter balance the impressive statistics above and whilst accepting email personalisation is an important element for developing strong online strategy, it has been reported that only 5% of companies are actually using personalisation ‘extensively’ (Econsultancy, 2014). This is partly due to the fact that 60% of companies admit that they struggle to personalise content in real time, and it’s clear that there is a confusion about how to successfully execute it.

This blog is going to identify a few key strategies/tactics that companies should consider when trying to create a personalised email programme supported by some examples of how and where it has been particularly effective. In doing so it will look also into to some its potential drawbacks that may arise.

The first tactic a business should consider is that it needs to ask the right questions.

By doing this, a business is able to segment their customers into different categories, ultimately allowing the business to make the emails they send to their customers more personalised and more importantly relevant. Just asking simple questions to your customers such as what are the reasons for them entering your website, can result in them giving the company useful insight into their consumer patterns and other personal data allowing the company therefore to start to build a relationship with a potential customer resulting in that customer becoming a user/subscriber to the company’s personalised targeted email. It’s the start of the marketing chain.

One good example where this has been particularly effective was for the business Paper Style, who are a small wedding planner business. When an individual became interested in the business and accessed their company website, they entered their email in to the company’s subscription list, and a series of emails were sent out to identify whether they were enquiring about a wedding for themselves or for a friend as shown below. In other words, they were targeted questions.

As soon as the reason behind the interest was established, the customers were segmented in to one of the two categories. This then enabled the company to instigate a personalised email campaign the results of which were outstanding with open rates increasing by 244%, email click rates by 161% and their revenue per mailing increase by 330% (Taylor, 2014).

A second important factor that might be considered when developing personalised emails is the time and location.

It is no secret that there are certain times where customers are most likely to engage and respond to a personalised email, so this should really be considered when sending these emails. Below is a table showcasing that the most effective time to send an email to a customer is in the evening. The more people that interact (Click on the email), the higher the potential revenue will be for the business.

As clearly shown in this pie chart, this particular research identified the highest response rates were between 8pm and 12am presumably when the frenetic working day had finished and companies were able to take stock and deal with the administrative issues of the company. This graph is based on a study conducted by Experian (Day, 2012).

When creating a personalised email campaign for customers and third strategy to be considered might be to enable automated behavioural trigger emails.

Do you ever get an email from Facebook when you have not been online for 5 days? This is Facebook’s trigger email, and it is a very effective way to increase your email open rates. According to research by Forrester research, trigger based email marketing campaigns can generate 4x more revenue and 18x greater profits. Sales are rarely made in one conversational transaction and the power of effective follow up should not be underestimated. Often potential customer/consumers cannot make their minds up on the first sale approach and a well-constructed follow up with frequently close the sale. But trigger emails can be potentially time consuming and an administrative headache for small companies who might be unable to track the huge amount of emails and therefore specialist companies have been set up to deal with this need

One of these specialists is GetVero.com. Through this website, a company is able to set a certain time period in which a trigger email is sent to a customer after they have not interacted in their email or website over a certain time (Vero, 2016).

Further reading on the benefits of personalised email campaigns and how to make them more effective can be found in the following 2 links:

https://emailmarketing.comm100.com/email-marketing-tutorial/personalized-email.aspx

https://econsultancy.com/blog/10301-to-use-or-not-to-use-personalisation-in-email-marketing/

Whilst personalised emails are important there are some negative issues with them. Firstly, some recipients object to the fact that they are receiving personalised emails. They see it as breach of their personal space and are irritated that someone that they haven’t met are emailing them in a personalised way. They wish to remain simply private and will on receipt of the email actually become less disposed to purchase the product /service promoted.

Receiving non-relevant email information might irritate other recipients. Before the company has even ascertained exactly what the customer might want they are calling them by their name. This might well lead to the individual having an instant negative opinion to the company. More examples of the potential negative effects of personalised email marketing can be found in the link below

https://paperstudios.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/the-benefits-and-disadvantages-of-personalization-community-building-and-direct-email/

References

Collwin, S. (2013). Triggered Email Campaigns [Infographic] – Smart Insights Digital Marketing Advice. [online] Smart Insights. Available at: http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing/behavioural-email-marketing/triggered-email-campaigns-infographic/ [Accessed 22 Apr. 2016].

Day, A. (2012). The Best Times to Send Email Marketing Campaigns | VerticalResponse Blog. [online] Vertical Response Blog. Available at: http://www.verticalresponse.com/blog/best-time-send-email-marketing-campaign/ [Accessed 22 Apr. 2016].

Econsultancy. (2014). Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing: Why Marketing Should Be Personal. [online] Available at: https://econsultancy.com/reports/quarterly-digital-intelligence-briefing-why-marketing-should-be-personal/ [Accessed 22 Apr. 2016].

Kanda, Y. (2015). Everything is personal. [online] Slideshare.net. Available at: http://www.slideshare.net/yaelkander/everything-is-personal [Accessed 22 Apr. 2016].

MacDonald, S. (2014). Grow Your Business with Trigger Based Email Marketing. [online] www.emarketeer.com. Available at: http://www.emarketeer.com/blog/trigger-based-email-marketing-campaigns/ [Accessed 30 Apr. 2016].

Marketingcharts.com. (2012). Chart/table from: Most Emails Deployed in the Morning – But Best Results Seen in the Evening. [online] Available at: http://www.marketingcharts.com/online/most-emails-deployed-in-the-morning-but-best-results-seen-in-the-evening-27742/attachment/experian-email-marketing-time-of-day-performance-in-q4-2012-mar2013/ [Accessed 22 Apr. 2016].

Taylor, M. (2014). 5 Creative Ways Small Businesses are Using Marketing Automation | Venture Harbour. [online] Venture Harbour. Available at: https://www.ventureharbour.com/5-creative-ways-small-businesses-using-marketing-automation/ [Accessed 22 Apr. 2016].

Vero. (2016). Home – Vero. [online] Available at: http://www.getvero.com/ [Accessed 30 Apr. 2016].

Having an effective Facebook campaign has become increasingly important for businesses as they seek to retain and satisfy their existing customer base and drive new business. Facebook has over 800 million active users, making it the largest online platform available for businesses to showcase their products and or services (Laroche et al, 2012).

Supporting data has suggested that Facebook is a primary source of news and information for millennial’s (which can roughly be defined as anyone who was born between early 1980’s to the early 2000’s). One survey showed that 88% of millennial’s get news from Facebook at least occasionally (American Press Institute, 2015). Also, as shown in the chart below, Facebook can be seen as the best social media platform for news and information.

Facebook is clearly a hugely popular source of news and information, it is therefore an extremely fertile ground for both small and large businesses to advertise and promote their products. As a result, a strong Facebook presence has become a ‘must have’ for most businesses.

But what makes an effective Facebook business campaign? This blog focusses on three separate components that are necessary for a successful Facebook campaign.

Firstly, the campaign should be created on the back of a carefully developed plan.

When developing a marketing plan for Facebook, a business must align the goals and execution with their overall social media strategy; this means that none of the goals should have contradictory purposes or aims. To develop a plan, a business must begin with research, including a thorough analysis of their existing social media followers across all of their current networks.

Once this step has been completed, the next stage is to allocate an appropriate budget. The budget should include whether or not the campaign requires any paid social efforts, and should be a realistic expectation on the cost of running an effective Facebook campaign.

It has been reported last year that 48.9% of global business leaders are planning to increase their social media budgets (as shown in the graph below), making it an imperative for other businesses to make a move in this direction.

Simple advertising with no direct consumer interaction often doesn’t work. Plans and strategies must focus on creating a positive experience when a customer interacts with a businesses’ social media platform. Mike Dilorenzo, who is the director of social media marketing for NHL stated, ‘Social networks aren’t about websites. They’re about experiences’ (Wyshynski, 2009). Any plan must engage with this theory.

The second important stage for creating an effective Facebook campaign is clearly defined goals.

Businesses must identify what they plan to achieve by creating a Facebook campaign. Each goal needs to correspond to an overall objective (again aligned to other social media marketing initiatives), making it easier to analyse and measure the results.

One such goal could be increasing brand awareness. For a relatively new business this should be a fundamental goal that a Facebook campaign can quite easily achieve. By doing so customers should be able to easily recognise the brand, which will have the effect of increasing customer loyalty. One way in which a business can increase their brand awareness through Facebook is by engaging with their customers.

An example of this is shown in the figure below, where the company Litographs took to Facebook to ask their customers a question. As shown in the post, it received a lot of attention resulting in over 1,200 likes and 623 shares. The company uses their Facebook posts to drive sales, but they also do a good job of entertaining their audience with questions and humour (Vahl, 2015).

Another goal that can be achieved through a Facebook campaign is increasing visitor loyalty. This can be created by brand communities, whose aim it is to increase relationship marketing, which focuses on creating and maintaining long-term customer relationships, instead of promoting individual transactions, (Webster, 1992). As maintaining a one-on-one relationship with customers is not easy, brand communities have been introduced as a solution of serving customers through such social media platforms. They often share information, perpetuating the history and culture of the brand, and provide assistance to customers (Laroche, 2012); and they also greatly influence customer loyalty (Muniz and O’Guinn, 2001). By customers having some level of relationship with a business, they are more likely to visit their social media page on a regular basis.

The third and final component that an effective Facebook campaign should include is a thorough analysis.

There is little point in executing a marketing plan unless there are means by which its effectiveness can be measured? As such businesses should set out to analyse and measure the success of the Facebook campaign, and also if it achieved the goals it set out in the first stage.

Such techniques could include measuring how many more Facebook fans have the business obtained; and how many more likes on average the business is getting on their posts.

Such other measuring techniques could be tested through the set-up of redeemable vouchers. Here, a business can measure how many coupons were used through their Facebook promotions, giving them a clear indication of the quantity of people actively using and engaging with their Facebook page.

Facebook offer special services to businesses which in turn helps them to understand who responds to their messages.

Within this service, they have a tool called Page Insights which enables businesses to access the gender, age and location of the people who are the most engaged with their business so they can continue to engage with them through targeted adverts and promoted posts (Facebook for business, 2016).

This tool also offers a range of different services which include a detailed frequently asked questions section with solutions to all a business’s needs regarding measuring their Facebook audience as shown in the link below:

https://www.facebook.com/help/355635011174004

References

American Press Institute. (2015). How Millennials use and control social media. [online] Available at: https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/survey-research/millennials-social-media/ [Accessed 13 Apr. 2016].

Facebook for Business. (2016). How to Use Facebook for Business Marketing. [online] Available at: https://www.facebook.com/business/overview#measure-adjust [Accessed 13 Apr. 2016].

Laroche, M., Habibi, M., Richard, M. and Sankaranarayanan, R. (2012). The effects of social media based brand communities on brand community markers, value creation practices, brand trust and brand loyalty. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(5), pp.1755-1767.

Muniz, A. and O’Guinn, T. (2001). Brand Community. Journal of Consumer Research, 27(4), pp.412-432.

Vahl, A. (2015). 11 Ways to Boost Facebook Engagement for Small Businesses : Social Media Examiner. [online] Socialmediaexaminer.com. Available at: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/boost-facebook-engagement-for-small-businesses/ [Accessed 13 Apr. 2016].

Wyshynski, G. (2009). Inside the NHL’s social media innovations, growing pains. [online] Yahoo Sports. Available at: http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_daddy/post/Inside-the-NHL-s-social-media-innovations-growi?urn=nhl,199092 [Accessed 13 Apr. 2016].

This blog is going to assess and determine the effectiveness of businesses using promotional offers on Facebook to increase the sales of its products and services. Firstly, the blog will analyse the positive impact of sales promotion on Facebook. Secondly and to provide balance to the arguments it will then look at a couple of potential negative impacts, and then finally it will highlight a couple of case studies whereby companies have successfully used this means of marketing to drive sales.

Sales promotions are typically viewed as being a temporary incentive that encourages the trial and sale of a product or service (Kotler, 1988; Webster, 1971). Well-executed sales promotion programmes on Facebook have proved a very effective method of increasing brand awareness, with the aim of increasing overall sales. One powerful example of this was demonstrated when Amazon ran a sales promotion in 2014 as shown in the figure below. The large spike in the middle of the month was income generated from a Bookbub free promotion.

Having an effective sales promotion often results in many customers switching from one brand to the discounted one. The general consensus appears to be that brand switching is a major source of volume for businesses, (Gupta, 1988) which has become very prominent on Facebook as users switch from brand to brand often depending on their price. For example, Totten and Block (1987) show an example where 83.2% of the incremental volume due to a promotion comes from switchers. This has major implications for many businesses and should be an attractive reason to offer promotions on Facebook. However, the sales promotion needs to be the right balance between being attractive enough for the customer to choose the alternative product and still being profitable for the business.

However, this is not always the case and indeed some research has suggested that an increased use of brand promotions can have a negative effect on a business. One way in which this can occur is through decreased brand preference. Aaker (1996) found that promotions have the potential to damage brand equity by focusing the customer’s attention too heavily on price and away from the quality of the product. Similarly, Keller (1998) suggested other disadvantages of sales promotions such as decreased brand loyalty, decreased quality perceptions and increased price sensitivity. At the same time and as shown by the Amazon example above not all sales and price promotions have long lasting effect. Its impact can be sudden and productive but once the promotion is over the effect on sales diminishes and in some cases sales return to their pre promotion levels.

Nevertheless, despite some negativities sales promotions remains a powerful marketing tool, increasing brand awareness and customer base for a company and one which is widely used on Facebook as its able to target a businesses specific customers

One specific type of sales promotion on Facebook involves coupon’s, which are certificates that give consumers discounts on goods or services when they are redeemed with retailers or manufacturers. They are often used to achieve specific sales and marketing goals, and have become popular with small business owners as they are cheap to distribute, and have been historically effective. They are particularly popular with customers as they offer immediate value and savings. One advantage of specifically using coupons as a means of sales promotions is that the consumers perceive coupons as a temporary special offer and not a reduction in price, so when the coupon is taken off, the customer does not have a negative effect on the sales. Facebook offers to businesses a targeted customer group to promote these coupons

The use of sales promotion on Facebook generally entices new customers to try a product or service for the first time. Schindler (1989) found that people who redeem coupons feel good about themselves saving money. When a customer feels good about a product or a service they have received they are likely to tell their family and friends about their positive experience, which will increase the sales of a business. According to, Heskett, Sasser and Hart (1990) those with pleasant recollections of an experience with a brand tell six people, demonstrating effectiveness of promotions.

Lets now look at a couple of examples of successful Facebook promotional campaigns. One of the objectives when creating an effective sales promotion, it is important to always place the customers’ expectations and needs at the centre. One successful example of this was when the company Tailor Threads co-operated with Good Morning America and ran a promotion for Fathers Day. They offered their Facebook fans 50% off all purchases. They have over 300,000 fans and were able to get almost a thousand orders from that promotion (Jackson, 2012).

A second case study involves the company Coastal Contacts also conducted a successful effective sales promotion, when they offered a flash promotion on their Facebook page. They offered a ‘10,000 glasses give away’ where customers who become first-time Facebook fans receive a free pair of eyeglasses. By doing so they were able to increase their social media base, and their number of customers, and in doing so could then on sell to these new customers moving forward (Jackson, 2012).

The article below gives advantages and disadvantages of using sales promotions, and also when a business should consider using them as a means of increasing brand sales.

http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/sales/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-sale-promotion/50916/

References:

Aaker, D. (1996). Building Strong Brands. New York, 1(1), pp.1-60.

Chevalier, M. (1975). Increase in Sales Due to In-Store Display. Journal of Marketing Research, 12(4), p.426.

Gupta, S. (1988). Impact of Sales Promotions on When, What, and How Much to Buy. Journal of Marketing Research, 25(4), p.342.

Heskett, J.L., Sasser, W.E. and Hart, C.W.L., 1990. Breakthrough Service

Jackson, T. (2012). 12 Promotional Tactics To Boost Sales. [online] BrandMakerNews. Available at: http://brandmakernews.com/business-brand/promote-your-brand/7690/12-promotional-tactics-to-boost-sales.html [Accessed 12 Apr. 2016].

Keller, K. (1988). Strategic Brand Management. Upper Saddle River, 1(1), pp.1-20.

Kotler, P. (1988). Analysis, Planning, Imple- mentation and Control. Marketing Management, 1(1), pp.1-80.

Schindler, R. (1989). The Excitement of Getting a Bargain. Some Hypotheses Concerning the Origins and Effects of Smart-Shopper Feelings. Marketing Research and Public Opinion Polling, 16(1), pp.447-453.

Totten, J. and Block, M. (1987). Analyzing Sales Promotions : Text and Cases. Commerce Communications, 1(1), pp.1-50.

Webster, F. (1971). Modern promotional Strategy. Marketing Communication, 1(1), pp.1-70.