So you’ve built up your fan base and now you’re wondering what you can do to actually turn these fans into paying customers? Here are five clever ways that companies have used our platform to turn their Facebook Fans into customers….and the great thing is that via our platform any company, big or small, can run such campaigns for minimal cost and effort.
Tip #1: Turn your coupons into a game!
Online ‘private’ retailer Hautelook ran a coupon campaign with us but instead of just offering up a coupon they made it much more fun by creating an ‘instant win’ coupon game. After becoming a fan of the Hautelook Facebook Fan Page entrants were presented with a coupon but the value of each coupon was a surprise and ranged from 10% to 20%, and some had free shipping. The results were great! Not only did Hautelook generate thousands of new fans they also generated tens of thousands of sales in just one day. In fact, they generated a return on investment of more than 5x and over 20% of purchasers were first time Hautelook customers. The great thing about this campaign is that it turned something standard like a coupon into something fun and exciting like a game.
Tip #2: Drive People into your Store via a Giveaway
Giveaways are a great way to engage people and generate word of mouth, but by offering a giveaway that must be picked up in store it can also be a great way to drive purchases. Digital Surgeons, a digital marketing agency, used Wildfire to run a giveaway for their client Edible Arrangements. After becoming a Facebook Fan of Edible Arrangements entrants received a voucher for free chocolate dipped strawberries. But to redeem the coupon fans had to visit an Edible Arrangements store – thus providing a fantastic opportunity for local Edible Arrangements franchisees to promote their store to a slew of new customers. This campaign was a wild success for Edible Arrangements – not only did it generate 170,000 new fans but it also resulted in a double-digit increase in sales from the year prior.
Tip #3: Drive visitors to your online store via a creative sweepstakes
Zappos ran a unique sweepstakes with Wildfire where they promised users the chance to win a $500 voucher for use at Zappos, but only after entrants visited the online store and put together a list of the items that they would purchase with the winning money, if it were theirs. This was a powerful way to encourage thousands of people to not only visit the Zappos site but to also create a list of their favorite items on Zappos, which, in turn, encouraged many consumers to buy.
Tip #4: Create lucky coupons to draw users into your store
Jamba Juice launched a campaign called “Feel Good Bucks” that used Wildfire’s unique coupon code generation functionality in a very interesting way. They gave out ‘lucky’ coupons via our Facebook Connect Product and Facebook Fan Page Product that could be redeemed at Jamba Juice stores. When consumers redeemed the coupons they either received $1 off their purchase or they had the opportunity to win one of many thousands of instant prizes, including cash prizes of $10,000! To make Jamba’s campaign even more fun and social, they combined it with Wildfire’s Virtual Gifting solution so users could send Jamba Bucks to their friends in the form of fun, Jamba-branded virtual gifts like smoothies, bucks, and cartoons. By combining the utility of a coupon with the anticipation of an instant win and the social channels of Facebook, Jamba was able to generate huge interest in their campaign and drive tens of thousands of consumers to purchase at their stores.
Tip #5: Use a sweepstakes to drive people to your coupon
In celebration of its one millionth Facebook Fan, Duck Tape launched a Wildfire sweepstakes, giving 100 lucky winners a Duck Tape prize package. But to sweeten the deal for every entrant in the sweepstakes, they also put up a coupon for $1 off a roll of Duck Tape, which was available for claim to anybody completing their submission into the sweepstakes. Sweepstakes are not only a great way to encourage users to interact with your fanpage and website but they’re also a powerful way to drive people to your coupon or online shopping cart so it’s certainly worth considering the combination of a sweepstakes with a coupon.
These retail ideas are great…what about service businesses or business to business ideas?
Thanks for the compliment, Carly! We’re still building our library, but if you have ideas, definitely send them in to our info@wildfireapp.com email! Thanks!
I’ve been coming up with a few service and b2b ideas. I would love to share and get some feedback!
contact me:
facebook,com/ott.ott
twitter
@ryanlott
Excellent post. Thank you!
Thanks for the kind words Amber! We appreciate the positive feedback!
Some good ideas. Like the concept of an entry with a coupon attached.
good ideas… hadn’t thought of these….
Do you have tips for reaching the appropriate market with your sweepstakes? I have done 2 sweepstakes with Wildfire and while we have had a lot of newsletter sign ups a lot of them are not in our target market. We are looking for women 28+ with a high household income.
Hey Catherine,
While there is no way to target your sweepstakes as it is built, at the moment, there are some great advertising methods you could consider, especially within Facebook. Check out this previous blog post for tips about targeting: http://blog.wildfireapp.com/2010/03/25/7-strategies-for-marketing-your-facebook-fan-page-promotions/
Cheers!
Hello,
I was wondering the cost to run these tips of promotions.
I was considering running a similar promotion for invite a friend and recieve % off your next purchase.
Ashley Hall
Account Executive
ashley@voices.com
Voices.com
Hey Ashley,
Thanks for writing in! Check out the details around our pricing plans here: http://www.wilfireapp.com/pricing
Have a great day!
Interesting but not very applicable for many other business. Even driving fans to your webpage is a hard thing to do these days. For example with 100k fans and push a link to your site you’d be luck to get 1k in visits. Getting fans is easy, to monetize them is very difficult.
Hey Dean,
Thanks for your feedback! Its definitely not easy to drive traffic to your webpage. Thats why we try our best to share the stories of how companies we’ve worked with managed to do this successfully, whether with coupons or any other type of promotions!
Cheers!
Maya,
Regard to you message to Dean May 18, 2010 at 12:29 pm.
You were talking about driving traffic to the site. I am part of a group of people that are about to launch a website next week that serves as a landing spot for business to be advertised, but the real beauty is that the program gathers info of your biz, then markets you every day to your potential customers. Excellent innovation. It will be a hit
For years I thought facebook was a fad. I thought it was just another time waster. How my views have changed. Facebook is where a LOT of people hang out. Its a great way to target potential customers and develop loyal customers. Your ideas to engage facebook fans are excellent. Keep them coming…
Hey Damon,
Thanks so much for the kind words! As long as the readers keep reading, we will keep writing. Cheers!!
Tip 3 looks very interesting. How to make up a campaign like this on our website while lining up more fans on facebook?
i like to know this further
Hi,
I really liked the post.I had never thought of these ideas before.Nice post.
I would like to get a fan base built up that could bring money in for charity. I have a business and I am doing a long cycle for charity. I was thinking of using my Fan page link to built database and also donate to this charity.
eg, Click on my Fan Page, Click Like and you will have donated 25c to the charity. Anything like that is there. Instead of people using credit card to donate directly?
Hey Niall,
This is not currently a feature for our platform, being able to pay as you like, but your suggestion is a great one, which would be cool to think about trying to implement. In the meantime, best of luck with your ride!
Yes, I can always think of such ideas, only problem is you have to spent a small fortune to get some programmers to build something into your facebook profile….
I would deemed this is good tip if I am capable to putting my blogsite into my profile page!
Hey Cijay,
With Wildfire you don’t need to pay a small fortune to get functional promotions into your Facebook Fan Page– you dont need a developer at all! The promotion builder is an easy, 6 step wizard that takes you through the process of creating your coupon (or other campaign) step by step, and a prices which businesses of any kind can afford, starting as low as $5+ $1/day. Check out the rates at http://www.wildfireapp.com/pricing.
Cheers!
Thanks for the tips–these were really helpful. I especially appreciate the case studies. I already have a few ideas for my next Wild Fire campaign when my client launches their new e-commerce site… nice work!
Thanks Alyson!
Great ideas! I like that you encourage companies to engage their customers, to grow advocates for the brand. Get people to do the leg work for you. Great job!
Thanks for the compliments Paula! We appreciate the great feedback we get from our fans and friends. Means a lot to us!
Hi Maya,
Did those examples all use the White label plan?
Can you combine a coupon with an instant win on the premium plan? Is that how the program works normally with the unique coupon code generation? And what about combining that with the Gifting app? Wondering what can be done with the premium plan. When you do case studies, it would be helpful to indicate what level of plan was chosen. Thx.
Hey Carla,
All of the coupons in this instance were white labels, you are correct. However, in our new library of case studies, found at http://www.wildfireapp.com/customers/entertainment, all of the case studies have varying pricing plans involved, and all state which price plan was used, so there are some great examples of non-white label campaigns there as well.
Even though these are white labels, however, the ideas within the tips remain the same if you run any of our pricing plans. For example, did you know you could upload a collection of Unique IDs which are generated with each coupon redeemed, and on your end allocate each unique ID to an instant win? For example, if I am a user and I just claimed your coupon with unique ID ABX1, when I went to redeem it in your cart, I would be told, ABX1 means I get 10% off!
Thanks for taking the time to write in!
Maya
I assume these were white label campaigns? It would be great when you feature campaigns on your blog if you could list the type of campaign. Thanks!
Just noticed the earlier comment and your response–sorry for the duplication. However, I checked the first couple of case studies in you page you linked to, and neither of them list the type of campaign.
Hey Savannah,
Thanks for the comment and the follow-up…those case studies have gone through so many revisions, sometimes it gets hard to catch when we missed something! We will add a detail to the details page of each of them to outline what plan they were shortly. Thanks again for the great feedback!
Very smart and practical tips, I will share with my clients. Thanks Wildfire!
Thanks so much, Cherry!
with a very small business and a fan group of only around 1000, is it likely to be successful for me to campaign in this way, or do I need to build the fan base significantly to experience success? Your examples leave me out of the picture…
)
Hey Jenny!
Thanks for your comment. You can absolutely experience a great amount of success even with 10 fans– its all a matter of creating an engaging promotion. Giving away a sweet prize is the best way to get the first 10 hooked initially, and incorporating social elements to try to get folks to spread the word helps it along. Before you know it, those 10 people have told all their friends, who told their friends, and so on. This situation is even better with 1,000! Here’s the thing though– you really need to make a proactive effort to engage your users. We wrote up some great tips for that in this post, you should check it out. I think you will like it, and if you try the tips out, let us know how it goes!