How to Gain Facebook Fans To Promote Experiential Marketing

For those of us who spend an embarrassing amount of time on Facebook, it’s common to accidentally scroll through 17 different photo albums, get distracted by multiple Facebook games, or occasionally actually click on those pesky sidebar ads, and after a while, we may end up unexpectedly on pages we thought we’d never go to (I somehow ended up on Justin Bieber’s fan page the other day…).  So for companies, the question is: how do we encourage consumers to purposefully (or “accidentally”) visit and “like” our fan pages?
Let’s take a look at these great examples for some quick tips:

  1. Victoria’s Secret: motivate consumers to “like” your page by promoting giveaways!  This Victoria’s Secret promotion gives each new fan a gift card, up to a $500 value. You can also utilize this strategy at event activations to gain Facebook popularity.  In addition to gaining Facebook fans, this Victoria’s Secret promotion tactic requires fans to register, which provides basic demographic information about their consumers and drives foot traffic to Victoria Secret’s stores.
  2. Starbucks: allow current fans to promote your page! Starbucks encourages fans to give friends a Starbucks Card e-gift, which is then posted straight to the recipient’s wall.  This method of gift-giving is convenient for the gift-giver and a great way for Starbucks to drive traffic to its fan page.  This is also a great way to engage consumers onsite at experiential marketing events.
  3. Skittles: add a little “pop” to your homepage! Just remember to keep it simple and easy to navigate. Skittles uses its home page to pique the interest of the consumer, with catchy phrases such as “find the rainbow,” “experience the rainbow,” and “win the rainbow.”  These link consumers to Skittle’s video advertisements, website, contests and other marketing events.  You can encourage fans to spend more time on your page by making the page more interactive, and consumers enjoy sharing fun and interesting pages with their friends.
  4. Coca-Cola: be straight-forward! At the top of Coca-Cola’s fan page, it clearly says, “Like Coke? There’s a button for that!” Coke’s page also uses many of the good strategies we’ve mentioned so far.  Its Arctic cause and fan highlights both encourage consumer interaction. In addition, Coca-Cola’s fan page design does a great job of featuring its other social media efforts on Twitter, Youtube, and Flickr.

Who knew it could be so easy?