Fans and Followers Want Deals – Social Media Marketing Should Respond and Measure ROI

The latest survey by MarketingSherpa indicates Facebook fanpage and Twitter followers expect something from the brands they are following. As a matter of fact the study reveals that a solid 64% of average fans that “friend” a brand in order to get the inside track on specials, sales and deals. For the most part, major brands have recognized this trend, however this astounding percentage can’t be overlooked by small and medium sized businesses either.

Though the study identified two user “friending” categories of Max connectors, those with more than 500 connections and Daily users that were described as average users; I am going to focus on the Daily user in this article. The Daily user is your typical customer or prospect and the one that is likely to not have their feeds overflowing with thousands of posts everyday that go unseen.

In an earlier article I wrote this year, I explained that 2010 will see a change in how social media is used and that delivering value will continually trend higher as fans expect more. This latest survey places an extreme exclamation point on my statement and warns brands that though many parts of social media marketing has no cost, i.e fanpage and Twitter account creation, a mind set of paying fans through special deals needs to take hold.

We know the social media Value trend is upon us now, so building and executing a strategy is a next step, however there are several other extremely important elements to consider.

1) How do you intend on deploying your deals to your customers?
2) How are you going to be able to track views of your offers?
3) Do you have the infrastructure to measure offer acceptance rates?
4) Can you easily measure the return on investment of your fan offers?
5) Can your offers automatically be made viral and encourage your fans friends to accept the deal also?

Until yesterday, measuring fanpage traffic and analytics was impossible. However, Facebook announced that they are instituting a new analytics system for fanpages. But only for those pages with 10,000+ fans. Great for major brands, not so helpful for local and medium companies. More importantly, is the fact that there will still be nothing in a fanpage to deploy, measure and track views and acceptance rates of the special deals being offered to your fans and followers.

As you move forward with your social media marketing strategy on Facebook and Twitter, large and small brands alike need to be sure their Value proposition is inline with followers expectations AND create a plan to deal with the other important ROI elements required to make it profitable.

By Robert M. Caruso
CEO fondalo, Inc.
www.facebook.com/robertcaruso

**fondalo - one solution to consider**

The fondalo platform forever changes the ROI landscape for business social media marketing and delivers a platform both within an outside of Facebook. The fondalo website AND integrated facebook application gives business a tool to deploy and track special deals to fans and followers, that automatically posts views and acceptance of your offers to a users feed, suggesting their friends accept your offer as well. At the same time, the fondalo system manages the number of views, offer accepts and can deploy your deals via controlled online coupon, direct web link or even through a special telephone number.

Call fondalo for additional information on how we can help your company strategize and execute your social media marketing campaigns with a quick return on investment. 503-764-1444