F.U. Advertising Case Study

Want to know more about my F.U. Advertising experiment? 

In just 60 days with less than $60, I reached over 60,000 highly targetted users. Now, that is Facebook Uncomplicated Advertising. And this is my case study… 

 

With all of the tech tools and the business advice out there, it can be difficult to filter the noise and find simple techniques to meet your goals. 

If you are tired of tossing your advertising dollars out the door and would like to learn more about the benefits of social media marketing and advertising, then I’d like to share a case study with you. 

Less than two months ago, I launched a Facebook page for my cowork business. Search for “Cowork Space” on Facebook and click like if you want to see this experiment grow.  

60K Reach with $60 in 60 Days.

The 60 day experiment has provided a lot of great results in brand awareness and lead generation as well as an easy and clean communication channel for me to inform my members and prospects or leads. With my free Facebook page, I’ve been able to create an online presence that has allowed my search results to grow and provide a one-stop shop to direct parties to visit from all of my printed communication materials. This online page is simple to add content like links, photos, videos and event details. I’ve also created an ad campaign in less than four hours that ran for four days and it generated traffic beyond my expectations. The experience has been great and the best part? I’m able to monitor the results and share the data with you today! 

In a nutshell, the benefits from my Facebook page for my business are:

- Ease and convenience

- No cost for an online web presence

- Low cost for high traffic advertising

- Hyper-focused targeting capabilities 

- Detailed tracking and analytics

Just a Facebook Page.

The main purpose of my Facebook page is to share information, photos, event invitations and deals/discounts. This costs me nothing but time and discpline. I aimed to add a post once every 2 - 5 days. My marketing goal for TMC Cowork Space is to educate others on the benefits of coworking and to attract new members to purchase passes. 

What is a Waste of Time and Money?

Has the Facebook page brought in any revenue to justify my investment? Two of the most recent local advertising efforts I can compare to the Facebook activites include:

- Billboard advertising ($2400 for one image/message in one location for one year, no tracking)

- Newspaper advertising (costs as low as $200 a day for a paper that can only provide the number of papers printed, it cannot measure if the 5000 papers were opened, or the time spent looking at the printed page, or if the reader reacted with an eyebrow raise or told his friends… in other words, costs are high, difficult to target, no tracking)

The only measurement I can use to analyze my billboard and newspaper advertising would be my checking account. Costs and time are very high. Results? ZERO. 

The Numbers Make Sense.

Here are some of the results I have received from launching my Facebook page less than two months ago:

- One Facebook page, photos and content updates weekly, free.

- 56 fans, free.

- Weekly posts on my business have received 3,590 views, or 7,178 eyeballs, free. 

- 86 people have checked-in using Facebook on their mobile devices. This doesn’t include the number of check-ins and exposure from other mobile tools. Cost? Just free passes that get new members to walk in the door. And free coffee mugs that further spread the Cowork Space name in the local community. Cost for this added exposure? Pretty free. 

- 4 Day Ad Campaign that reached over 50,000 people a day within a 20 mile radius of my business cost $52 and was created in less than two hours. See the graph below.

Want to Learn More About Facebook Uncomplicated Advertising?

Contact Andrea Cook to learn more about educational opportunities like coaching and training programs or see if full service media and advertising management is a good fit for you. 

Rural Office Space Uses Mobile Marketing

It has been a year since The Midas Center has moved to the prominent location in a rural downtown main street of Plymouth, Indiana. There are many benefits a rural downtown location can bring to a professional service provider that is able to rely on technology to work virtually or remotely for larger client projects. 

The Midas Center is no stranger to downtown locations. Owner Andrea Cook started the creative communications consultancy in 1999 in Chicago and appreciates the hustle bustle the 9 to 5 daily grind brings to the center of a city. Whether your office location is in the Loop or a rural downtown, the traffic made by foot and car makes for a prime advertising opportunity to attract and promote business.

Aside from creative window displays and designs, businesses can optimize their outreach by using social and mobile media.

Here are some of the campaigns that The Midas Center is currently running through Foursquare and Facebook. Perhaps you too can implement them for your office location and capture that downtown buzz and foot traffic.  

1. Foursquare Tips, Campaigns and Specials

In addition to consulting services, The Midas Center provides shared cowork space for professionals. To reach more local professionals, some simple campaigns and specials have been created through Foursquare. If you have not created a venue for your business on Foursquare, you are missing an opportunity to engage.

Want to get some more free real estate on Foursquare? Add a simple tip about your business. Include basic information as a tip, such as:   

“The first cowork space to offer professionals a meeting place. Great coffee and golden synergy, just two of the many benefits. Daily and monthly passes are available.”

The next recommendations require you to add a little more skin into the game. And by skin, I simply mean some swag  to give away. Then, once you’ve decided what swag or giveaways you are comfortable with investing, there are a variety of campaigns and specials that can be created in simple steps using Foursquare.  

Consider two levels of giveaways for each level of participation. A user checking in to your venue for the first time, may get a lighter valued giveaway, versus a loyal user to checks into your venue frequently. Fortunately, Foursquare has built a system based on this principle that is simple to set up. For example, when someone checks-in to The Midas Center Cowork Space for the first time, the user “unlocks” the Newbie level and then gets one free daily pass to use at the cowork space. One free daily pass is valued at $20. A day pass would not be a worthy giveaway for a mayor however. At The Midas Center, when a user becomes our mayor, then this message shows:

 

How can someone become the mayor? A Foursquare mayor is the user who has checked-in the most in the past 60 days. That is the playful and addicting side of this social game. You’d be surprised the number of adults who earn bragging rights by becoming mayor at leading venues. Some places will offer free cheese burgers, drinks, etc.

There are a lot of venues who want users to check-in to their venues on Foursquare but try tempting them with lame specials. This is not recommended. If businesses are investing the time to give social and mobile marketing tactics a try, then they need to make sure that their reward is attractive enough. The perfect mix will depend on each venue’s budget, audience -type and -interests. 

Newbies get a free daily pass for checking in the first time at The Midas Center. Mayors get an entire monthly pass for free, valued at $200! 

We also are running a special called a Loyalty level. Once users check-in on their third time, they unlock the Loyalty level and this appears:

Free passes and coffee mugs are the giveaways for our Foursquare campaigns. We’re able to track progress as well as manage the schedule with a start and end date. Foursquare also provides some handy dandy guides you can print to encourage people to check in. They look like this: 

To promote this campaign, we’ve placed these print-outs in our window. We also are highlighting this campaign through a variety of local social media communities. It’s too early to share information about the success. We can tell you that setting up these campaigns with Foursquare took less than 2 hours so right our the gate, our starting investment is low. If we get one person who checks in, we will be satisfied. How’s that for low expectations? 

The other area of new media marketing that we are implementing to our outreach is through the advertising offerings provided by Facebook. 

2. Facebook Ads, Recommendations and Deals

With over 800 million users on Facebook, we now have more friends to socialize online with than ever before. The average numer of friends each user has is 130. Over half of the total number of users log in to Facebook a day and 56% of Facebook users update their status on a weekly basis.  

The only people who are discounting Facebook’s value are people who don’t understand or are trying to compete with it. As a small business with chump-change pockets, we LOVE Facebook. Since the local newspaper won’t run any of our press releases without a commitment of big dollar advertising support, we rely on Facebook for our go-to channel to share information and reach our audience. Here are some of the ways we are putting our Facebook page to work for us. 

Ads.    The Midas Center routinely will recommend Facebook ad campaigns for clients. No other media allows you to reach and measure a targeted audience so effectively. It’s cost-effective too. One client of ours received a 4000% ROI on a 30 day run of a Facebook ad. We have some Facebook ads in place to encourage both impressions and clicks. One of the ads we are running offers users a free eBook on 65 Reasons to Cowork. Right now, the landing page for the eBook is embedded on our Facebook page, however, we plan to use our web site for this in the future. We run a lot of testing to see what type of image and message gets the most activity. With daily budgets as low as $2, we can play around and experiment a bit.

Recommendations.     Facebook also has an area along the right side of their site for recommendations. You may be surprised the brands your friends have recommended. Why not encourage users to recommend your business page? This is what the recommendations look like: 

When people add a recommendation on Facebook, it is displayed to all of their friends. This is great exposure and a solid dose of credibility for the business page! 

Printed Referral Program.      To encourage people to add recommendations, we are currently running a referral program that outlines the steps necessary to recommend The Midas Center on Facebook. When users refer The Midas Center Cowork Space to their Facebook friends, they receive $20 and their friend who signs up gets a significant discount off their first monthly pass. We recently sent a letter campaign that details this campaign. We also are sharing the referral program through online outreach like this blog post. Do you want to participate? Click here for details >>

Deals.      Lastly, we also are participating in Facebook’s Deals. This feature allows Facebook users to “check-in” with their mobile devices like smart phones or iPads. Although there are rumors that Facebook discontinued this feature shortly after they rolled it out last year, the Deal is still available for businesses near The Midas Center location in northern Indiana. The Deal appears on the right side bar of the page and looks like this:

Facebook recommends posting this offer to your own page no more than once per day. These Deals can be scheduled and once the deal is approved, you cannot alter the schedule or message. It is unclear at this time how effective Facebook deals are. So far, the campaign has been active for a couple of weeks and no one has checked-in. I tried to but can never seem to navigate the process successfully. 

Our Overarching Campaign: Check-in, Get Free Stuff

The Midas Center is just trying to encourage pedestrians and road warriors passing by the window space to “check in, get free stuff” via Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare. If the imprint is made on their minds that we are offering “free stuff,” then perhaps we can get some mindshare and added exposure when they do check-in via their mobile devices.  

Sometimes reaching beyond the specific message and -medium is the actual message of the medium. 

The Midas Center sees social and mobile marketing as a must. As a forward-thinking creative communications consultancy, The Midas Center is claiming the social and mobile media space as an expert. How can we recommend marketing solutions to clients if we aren’t practicing what we preach? 

Want to get free stuff? Come on over and “check-in.” If you travel more than 30 miles, I’ll even buy you lunch! Although, I’m not sure that level-type is on Foursquare so you’ll have to prompt me with a verbal, “Let’s do lunch” like they did in the old days when people met in person and talked. ;)

Today's Publicity Problem Marketers Face and How to Overcome It

Rohit Bhargava (@rohitbhargava) author and exec at Ogilvy was the first presenter introduced during the #140conf #BrandsConf community’s Brands Conference “Humanization of Brands.”

Rohit understands the broken process behind brands and presented examples of brand stories: the good, the bad and the ugly. He has discovered that the creators and the managers behind the brand aren’t responsible for the full life cycle of a brand. In fact, the role of today’s marketer who is required to spin stories and ice the cakes that taste like crap, is in the midst of a serious PR problem. Rohit calls this dilemma a modern believability crisis. 

How can marketing and media professionals cut through the mess, solve the modern believability crisis and make a lasting impression that is believable? 

1. Tell a story.

2. Celebrate the truth.

3. Be honest and true.

This unexpected honesty can be the solution that clearly connects people with the heart and soul of a brand and cuts through the cakes that taste like crap.

Want to watch the video clip of this presentation? Here you go:http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/18407514

 — at New York City.

More on Rohit Bhargava, including the upcoming book titled Likeconomics, here you go: http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com

Contributed by Andrea Cook, #140Conf Live Event Correspondent. Andrea Cook has brands and buzz on the brain. Since 1999, her chicago-born consultancy, The Midas Center has provided award-winning marketing and media solutions to law firms, education facilities, non-profits, artists and hyper-local communities. She strives to support the noble game changers and life savers through social media marketing. She is a pioneer, coach, editor, cowork-owner and consultant for hire. Services vary, Live Event Correspondent services preferred. 

Webtrends Facebook Sessions, Live from Chicago Today

Today's Review from Webtrends

I will be live blogging from a Webtrends conference titled Facebook Sessions today, June 14th at the W City Center in Chicago. Facebook Sessions is a seminar series showcasing what's new in Digital. 

"What's new in Digital" may seem like a broad topic however the slated presenters are industry leaders proven in the field of marketing and analytics and I'm confident they will not disappoint. Although there are many self-proclaimed social media experts, these professionals have the backing of working for cutting-edge companies like Yahoo, American Airlines, AOL, Rosetta Stone to name a few.    

Justin Kistner, Senior Manager of Product Marketing of Social at Webtrends has a reputation that precedes him. I had the privilege to participate in a session by Justin on creating Facebook tabs and i-frames during a recent conference at BlogWorld in New York. Justin's session was chocked full of health and wealth for audience members during the most well attended session I witnessed throughout the week long conference. Between the clickety-clacks of each person ravenously taking notes and following the step-by-step instruction of Justin's Facebook tips, the room resounded with frequent ooos and ahhhs with occasional claps and woots. The response of the crowd proved to be a thirst quencher to the pack of parched professionals seeking solutions to the everyday obstacles of the new world of digital marketing. This pack of professionals traveled from coast to coast and midwestern points in between to absorb the latest trends and best practices of the blogosphere. 

The digital frontier, lacking in strong leadership yet green with opportunity is awaiting for clear direction, tips and tools for efficiency and effectiveness. Webtrends meets these needs of the marketplace and is offering the droves of agency mavens and in-house marketers the hands-on tips-of-the-trade through a traveling crew of guru-level presenters slated for the multi-site road show. With early June presentations in Atlanta and New York and an upcoming session scheduled in San Francisco, Webtrends plans to provide the community of today's digital frontier with solutions to the latest needs. Today's presenters slated to present from 2:00 to 5:00 this afternoon include Justin Kistner, Dennis Yu and Eric Ludwig.

Registration for this event begins at noon. Overall, the half-day program is designed to provide the answers to help:

•   Drive value with fans, including social commerce and fan nurture campaigns

•   Integrate a strategy for Facebook management, including online and offline channels

•   Increase conversion rates

•   Lower the cost of fan acquisition and sales

•   Manage and measure marketing channels across your organization

The afternoon will provide participants opportunities for education and networking with the following agenda:

1:30 - 2:00 Registration

2:00 - 5:00 Seminars

5:00 - 6:00 Reception

A no-nonsense crew of presenters will deliver an afternoon packed with takeaways for all levels of professional marketer. I hope to provide the diamonds of each session live through Twitter. Please follow the live tweets of the event at @WebtrendsEvents. A more thorough account of the day's sessions will be published tomorrow on Webtrends blog > 

If you have any specific questions on today's topics, please let me know and I will pass them along to the speakers. Also, if you would be interested in attending the future session slated for San Francisco please register here >

Want to get connected to the speakers or me? We'd love to have you join us by following us on Twitter! 

Justin Kistner,   @justinkistner

Dennis Yu, @dennisyu

Eric Ludwig, @thesemninja

Andrea Cook @andreacook

In Review Blog World NYC Live Blog Day 2

While attending the Blog World Expo last week at the Javits Convention Center in New York, we were able to capture industry-notable quotes on emerging technologies impacting business and leading the trends in technology, marketing, journalism and publishing as we know it. 

If you are interested in learning more about any of these topics, please visit the actual live blog report from Social Fresh by clicking here >  

Live blog sessions coverage on topics such as: 

Gamification Creating Obsession and Addiction for Marketing Success

FourSquare, Angry Birds, Triva Games and More

Why ToyotaFailed, Behind the Scenes 

In-House or Outsource PR? 

How to Build Lead and Sales 

How to Use Humor and More! 

This post  provides industry shaping quotes leaked directly from live presentations from dynamic leaders making impact in the social media realm such as:

Jason Keath (Social Fresh)

Kipp Bodnar (HubSpot)

Shelly Kramer (V3 Marketing)

Lucretia Pruitt (Geek Mommy)

Mike Schneider (Location Based Marketing for Dummies) 

Chris Pirillo (Lockergnomie)

Jordan Cooper (Notaproblog)

If you or your business would be interested in live blogging services, contact Andrea Cook to learn more about how you can provide your readers with hot updates, live from your next event. 

The Midas Center is an innovative communication service that transforms touchpoints to gold. Go for the gold >