Social media. The marketing world’s latest, greatest and most frustrating obsession? Everyone wants more likes, everyone desperately needs more likes, but does anyone actually know how to get more likes? Post pictures? Video? Haikus that doubles as e-coupons?
It’s a complex marketing problem for sure (who can ever remember the syllable counts for haiku?), but more importantly, it can also be a highly lucrative one for promotional product distributors. Take Gillian Hammond, account manager for Brand Fuel Promotions, who recently completed a highly successful promotion intended to boost likes to a company’s Facebook page. Wondering how she did it? Check out the ins and outs of her idea below!
Promo Marketing: Could you briefly describe a promotion of yours that you consider one of your best?
Gillian Hammond: One of our national clients approached us with the desire to increase their Facebook reach. But in a B2C environment, how do you do this without a massive TV/radio buy and taking over every billboard in metropolitan areas? We did it with a cellphone wipee.
PM: What was the promotion’s goal, and what did you do to make it happen?
GH: To increase their Facebook following. We gave the wipee as a “thank you” for liking the page (respondents private-messaged their mailing address), and extended the offer to “share the feed” with their friends to also receive a wipee via USPS. It was this last step that bumped the following numbers.
PM: What kinds of items did you use in the promotion, and why?
GH: We used a cellphone wipee. It was cheap! About $0.80 each. The accompanying ad card boasted a large imprint space and could accommodate a full-color imprint, [plus] the wipee worked on any phone type regardless to age or brand. [It was] lightweight and easy to mail [and] was an exclusive item and not available for purchase at your local 7-11 store.
PM: What was the best decision you made with this program, and why?
GH: Choosing the wipee itself. It took all the features, benefits and specs of that specific item to meet the campaign goals. Any other choice, like a silicone wristband for example, would have flopped.
PM: Did you run into any problems with the promotion, and if so, how did you overcome them?
GH: Logistics for mailing the wipees out to the respondents. The person doing this task had to gather the addresses, submitted through private-message on the clients Facebook page, organize them into an excel sheet, pull-pack-and-ship the wipees out. We solved this with temporary workers.
PM: Any other advice or insight you’d like to give related to this promotion?
GH: We should have ordered more wipees! We couldn’t run the initial campaign for as long as we’d hoped because we ran out of wipees. It was decided to run the campaign, again, quarterly.
Want to be considered for a future edition of My Best Promotion? Contact Michael Cornnell at [email protected] or (215) 238-5449 for a list of questions and other details.
