{"id":57,"date":"2011-09-07T19:04:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-07T19:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.specialtystoreservicesblog.com\/2011\/09\/07\/3-steps-to-a-more-effective-retail-facebook-presence\/"},"modified":"2011-09-07T19:04:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-07T19:04:00","slug":"3-steps-to-a-more-effective-retail-facebook-presence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.specialtystoreservicesblog.com\/testblog\/3-steps-to-a-more-effective-retail-facebook-presence\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Steps to a More Effective Retail Facebook Presence"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Amidst the many clouds of uncertainty surrounding retail use of social media, a few key strategies are starting to emerge. Three recent studies, <\/span>including a white paper written by yours truly<\/span><\/a>, have examined customer interactions with retailers via social media. Encouragingly, all three studies (<\/span>Emarketer recently summarized the findings from studies by Marketing Sherpa and Razorfish<\/span><\/a>) have very similar findings regarding customer desires in their social media interactions with retailers.<\/span><\/div>\n
While the percentages varied slightly, all three studies found customers who \u201cfriended\u201d or followed retailers said they were interested primarily in learning about new products and new or exclusive promotions. How great is that? I have to admit I was a bit surprised to see these results because it seems like current conventional wisdom says to avoid being promotional on sites like<\/div>\n

Facebook <\/span><\/a>in deference to its more personal nature. In hindsight, that conventional wisdom seems a little questionable since it\u2019s unlikely customers are going to interact with retailers like their friends. They know we\u2019re about selling to them \u2014 we\u2019re retailers!<\/span><\/p>\n

More good news: It appears that the customers who follow retailers are really the best, most engaged and brand committed customers for those retailers. I suppose that\u2019s not terribly surprising, but it\u2019s certainly valuable information. Since our findings were part of a larger customer satisfaction study, we were also able to determine that site visitors who also interact with a company on a social media site are more satisfied, more committed to the brand, and more likely to make future purchases from that company than customers who don\u2019t follow those retailers. Our study also found that 61% of people who follow retailers follow less than five retailers. That\u2019s further indication that people are really focused on their absolute favorite retailers.<\/div>\n
We also found that more than 80% of shoppers who use social media list Facebook as a site they use regularly, which makes it the overwhelming social media leader.<\/div>\n

YouTube <\/span><\/a>came in second place with only 31% of shoppers.<\/span><\/p>\n

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So, to summarize, our best and most engaged customers like to interact with us on Facebook (an incredibly viral platform) and want to hear about new products and promotions. This is a great foundation for a successful strategy!<\/div>\n
Without further ado, here are three steps to a more effective retail Facebook presence:<\/div>\n
1) Focus on best customers<\/strong>. Rather than trying to build our fan base to the highest possible numbers, let\u2019s focus on getting as many of our highest value customers as fans on Facebook. They\u2019re the most likely to become our Facebook fans anyway, but they\u2019re also the most likely to recommend us to their friends. Facebook\u2019s viral nature gives us the opportunity to put our Word of Mouth Marketing on steroids, and developing messages for our best customers gives us a clear focus. We should reach out directly to our best customers via targeted messaged and encourage them to join because we\u2026<\/div>\n
2) Give \u2018em special promotions and news about products<\/strong>. These are our best customers. Let\u2019s treat them well and make them feel special. Let\u2019s give them exclusive offers and early notice on cool new products.<\/div>\n

Victoria\u2019s Secret<\/span><\/a> does an excellent job here, and it shows. Of the Internet Retailer Top 40 retailers\u2019 Facebook pages I looked at, Victoria\u2019s Secret has by far the most fans at almost 2.7 million at the time of this writing. Clearly, they are delivering on customer expectations, and they\u2019re being rewarded for it by attracting lots of really engaged customers. <\/span><\/p>\n


\nMy good friend <\/span>Adam Cohen<\/span><\/a>, partner and social media lead at <\/span>Rosetta<\/span><\/a> and blogger at <\/span>a thousand cuts<\/span><\/a>, (and my go-to guy on all things social media) correctly cautions against too many rich, exclusive promotions as they could be unsustainable as the fan base grows. This is particularly true if the offers start to attract deal seekers who are not our best customers. Good warning from Adam and in line with the excellent old adage \u201ceverything in moderation.\u201d <\/span><\/div>\n
3) Leverage Facebook viral features<\/strong>. We\u2019re giving great, exclusive offers and product news to our best customers. Those best customers are the most likely to recommend us to their friends. Let\u2019s encourage them to do so. It could be as simple as letting them know an exclusive offer can be shared with their friends by simply hitting the \u201cshare\u201d link. There are lots of Facebook applications and other techniques that can be used, but I would personally just start simply and go from there. <\/span><\/div>\n
Bonus tip:<\/em> Make sure your page can be found in Facebook search. This isn\u2019t really one of my key steps, but during my research I was surprised by how poor Facebook\u2019s search is. For example, I searched for \u201cLL Bean\u201d and found nothing. Then I tried \u201cL.L. Bean\u201d and again got nothing. Their page is actually entitled \u201c<\/span>L.L.Bean<\/span><\/a>\u201d with no space between \u201cL.\u201d and \u201cBean.\u201d Facebook\u2019s search will only find it if you search for it exactly as it\u2019s titled. So, my tip is think about how people might search for your brand and then name the page with the most common search term.
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\nThree separate studies have all found that customers who friend or follow retailers in social media are most interested in learning about promotions and new products. That\u2019s some mighty strong corroboration, and it\u2019s incredibly great news. Judging from the large percentage of retailers with little-to-no Facebook presence, I\u2019m guessing many have been holding pat waiting for a clear direction on how to best leverage social media. While this information may not give the clearest direction for all social media channels, it certainly provides some clarity on today\u2019s biggest channel, Facebook. Different social media channels require different strategies and tactics, and in the end it\u2019s still important to learn more from our customers about their specific needs and desires and then work to satisfy them.<\/span><\/div>\n
In the meantime, let\u2019s build some really great Facebook pages for our best customers and give them some exclusive offers to enjoy. Please let me know when you\u2019ve got your page running so I can become a fan!<\/div>\n
What do you think? What have you learned about Facebook? What tips do you have?<\/div>\n
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Copyright 2010 www.retailshakennotstirred.com<\/a> All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amidst the many clouds of uncertainty surrounding retail use of social media, a few key strategies are starting to emerge. Three recent studies, including a white paper written by yours truly, have examined customer interactions with retailers via social media. Encouragingly, all three studies (Emarketer recently summarized the findings from studies by Marketing Sherpa and Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retail-planning-best-practices","category-sales-promotion-retail-marketing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.specialtystoreservicesblog.com\/testblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.specialtystoreservicesblog.com\/testblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.specialtystoreservicesblog.com\/testblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.specialtystoreservicesblog.com\/testblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.specialtystoreservicesblog.com\/testblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.specialtystoreservicesblog.com\/testblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.specialtystoreservicesblog.com\/testblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.specialtystoreservicesblog.com\/testblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.specialtystoreservicesblog.com\/testblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}