Jim Nichols

Partner, Strategist

Catalyst SF LLC

Catalyst Reports:

How You Market on Facebook®

Catalyst Reports: How You Market on Facebook Catalyst SF

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Contents PURPOSE ................................................................................................................................................. 3

INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................... 3

PROFILE CENTRIC MARKETING ................................................................................................................. 4

Brand Page: ......................................................................................................................................... 4

Founding a Group: ............................................................................................................................... 6

Joining a Group:................................................................................................................................... 7

Event Marketing: ................................................................................................................................. 8

AD CENTRIC MARKETING ......................................................................................................................... 8

Beacon: ............................................................................................................................................... 8

Social Ads: ........................................................................................................................................... 9

WIDGETS AND APPLICATIONS ................................................................................................................ 10

Widgets/Applications: ....................................................................................................................... 10

App Sponsorships .............................................................................................................................. 12

Widget Advertising: ........................................................................................................................... 12

MAJOR PROGRAMS ............................................................................................................................... 13

CONCLUSIONS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................... 13

Copyright 2008 Catalyst SF LLC. All rights reserved. Catalyst SF and the Catalyst logo are trademarks of Catalyst SF. All other companies and brand names referenced herein are trademarks of their respective companies.

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PURPOSE

This whitepaper is designed to give marketers a basic understanding of the avenues by which you can

market on Facebook. It is designed primarily for people who understand the basics of what Facebook is

and does but are unsure of the best ways to leverage the community in support of marketing goals.

One of the most exasperating aspects of digital marketing is that the rules are perpetually in flux. While

this enables companies to constantly improve on technologies and applications, it also makes it very

difficult to find out the basics of how to do things. That’s what this whitepaper is all about providing.

The idea is not to publish a laundry list of all of the marketing options but rather to focus on the most

important marketing channels in the Facebook community so that mainstream marketers can make the

most of their efforts.

INTRODUCTION

One of the most common questions we are asked at Catalyst is “How do I market on Facebook?” Some

traditional marketers seem to understand My Space better than Facebook. One reason is that marketing

on MySpace is largely page-centric, meaning that you set up a profile page for a brand much like you

build your own website.

But on Facebook, not so much. The essential difference in the way the two communities work, in my

opinion, is that MySpace is an environment in which you primarily visit pages of others, whereas

Facebook is more geared to using your profile page as a home base and having information brought to

you.

Not to say that you cannot visit pages on Facebook. You can. And you will. But because of the plethora

of widgets and other applications available in Facebook, there’s far less need to go a wandering.

That's a small part of what makes this site FAR more popular with professionals, because it isn’t so much

a “seeking” environment – meaning I seek information and contacts – but rather more of a “having”

environment – one in which news, functionalities, games, and other useful as well as divertive bits of

data are brought to you.

Because so many business people are on Facebook, interest in using it for marketing is strong – stronger

(I think) than using MySpace despite MySpace’s significantly higher uniques and page views. What I

want to do here is offer some basic information on how to market on Facebook using techniques

especially suited to that environment.

For simplification, I'm going to do some lumping together of options and say there are really three kinds

of marketing on Facebook: profile centric, ad centric, and app or widget centric.

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PROFILE CENTRIC MARKETING

The following approaches and techniques center around marketing efforts that begin or take place

primarily on Facebook pages specifically about a user or a brand.

Brand Page: Anyone can build a page on Facebook, including a brand. Sign up, put together an

appropriate business page, and you’re set. It probably makes more sense for a marketer to get a

business page than a personal page. Facebook itself says a business page is better than a profile page

because:

These pages come pre-installed with custom functionality designed for each category. For

example, a band Page has a music player, video player, discography, reviews, tour dates, a

discussion board that the artists can take advantage of. Third party developers will also build

an array of applications that they will compete for Page Admins to add to their Pages.

Facebook Pages are also not subject to a fan limit and can automatically accept fan requests.i

In addition, savvy marketers can create an attractive environment – with graphics and colors and video

and photos and of course text that can fit the brand standards of most brands.

(Taken from the Facebook Advertising Site)

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But now what? First, a bit of language distinction. You “friend” people, you “fan” brands. The thing is,

for most brands, the number of people who will make an effort to find your page and fan you is

probably fairly limited. Some brands will get lots of friends, others not. Don’t hold your breath unless

you are going to make a concerted effort to create an environment with valuable experiences. Of

course, that’s true on MySpace as well.

It’s also true that there are some unique viral aspects of Facebook that will help spread the word of your

brand page. When you are fanned by someone, the news of that friending will probably appear in the

“Newsfeeds” of everyone in that person’s circle (unless your fan opted out of this feature.) The

Newsfeed is usually found on the center of the user’s start page, and informs her of what she and her

friends are up to.

(Taken from my Facebook Start Page)

Getting in Newsfeeds could prove very valuable for some brands, let’s say…adidas®, but perhaps less

valuable for others, let’s say…Sno-Bol® Liquid Toilet Bowl Cleaner. That’s because the news will only

have value to the extent that the brand itself is compelling enough to the Newsfeed viewers that they

will click on it. Speaking for myself, I will be more likely to click on Scion® than Oxydol®.

Another interesting viral feature of Facebook is the Minifeed, which appears on the profile page of the

user and lists the things that the individual has done recently. News that a person has fanned your brand

will also appear here. Ditto when the person performs an action on your page. The people who visit the

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profile will see it. Some may click the news of the fanning. But don’t expect the number of people who

do that as a result of the average profile will be enough to fill a stadium.

(Taken from my Facebook Profile Page)

Hey, I’m not poo-pooing it, it will get you some members. But if you think in millions like I do, you’re not

gonna get there with just this. But every little helps. And it mushrooms of course, over time. If three

people fan you and each generates three more fans, and so on, you get that exponential growth curve

we all know and love.

Do all this. Absolutely. But once you have a profile and are getting a trickle of fans, there a number of

other things you can do to boost your brand communication. Here are four of the most important ways:

Founding a Group: Brands in Facebook can create groups and invite others to join them. To take a

simplistic example, suppose Honda® was trying to reach “tuners”, people who buy cars and modify them

for better performance. Yes, there's a lot more to being a tuner than that, but you get the idea. There is

a very specific demographic profile that has a high composition of tuners. By creating a tuner group and

inviting likely suspects of tunerdom, Honda could build an environment that would allow them to

dialogue with this audience effectively.

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Here's an example of an independent tuner group, for reference:

(Taken from the Ninja Tuners Facebook Group Page)

With this as an example I bet you can see how a brand like Honda might want to build a group of its

own.

As the creator of a group you will have some control over the content. Ensure you use it to make a

better consumer experience rather than a shilling platform. Or all your fans will go away.

The key issue here is creating an environment of value to the audience. No one is going to sit still to

watch Sell-a-thon commercials. But groups can be of enormous value to members. If you are a member

of Facebook, do a group search for a group of sneaker collectors. I have no doubt that a Nike®- or

adidas-sponsored sneaker collector group could garner thousands of members with the right content

and inducements, for example advanced access to new shoes. O-Cel-O® sponges might have more

difficulty acquiring group members. But I am certain that some creativity applied to the O-Cel-O

challenge could also make a group of value and interest to the target.

Joining a Group: Brands can communicate in groups they crate or sponsor. If there are ways to add

value to the discussion, you comments may be most welcome. But too much overtness or

commercialness in your communication stream may get you kicked out of a group or have your entire

presence in Facebook shut down. The Facebook people don’t mess around. They are very committed to

the idea of consumer defined experience.

The next tool was a complete mystery to me until I read the excellent Bible of Facebook Marketing by

Justin Smith. Thus I publish a portion of his entry below verbatim:

Joining a Network: Facebook Networks are like group pages for everyone who’s a member of

an Educational, Work, or Geographical network. While no Facebook members “own” any

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pieces of network pages, network pages offer 1) another way for users to discover events,

posted items, and marketplace listings, and 2) discussion forums and walls which any

members can post to.

Network pages are probably the most commonly accepted places to spam in Facebook. While

you can post there, keep in mind that your messages may be considered spammy even if

they’re real and relevant.ii

Event Marketing: As with groups, event marketing allows Facebook users to invite people to real

or virtual world events. For example, a vodka brand could invite people to a vodka tasting in a real bar in

a city or group of cities.

Events automatically receive a special page on which you can put in all the necessary and tempting

details. You can invite all your fans to an event, and the page even collects RSVPs if you want to

anticipate crowds and needs.

AD CENTRIC MARKETING

The next several approaches discuss advertising options on Facebook.

One of the advantages of advertising in an environment like Facebook is that the options for highly

precise contextual, behavioral, and demographic targeting are legion. Here are some highlights.

Whereas the tactics in the profile-centric section of this white paper are more geared to the hands-on

marketer – one who is herself trying to integrate the brand and its messages into the fabric of Facebook-

- there are also a variety of other tools to consider. Many are simply Facebook versions of other forms of

Internet advertising and Google Ad Sense. Here are some of the majors.

Beacon: Probably the most famous marketing tool on Facebook, Beacon is the system in which users’

purchases and actions on sites OUTSIDE OF FACEBOOK were published as news in Minifeeds and

Newsfeeds.

Started last November, the system is a sort of “keeping up with the Joneses” application that tells your

friends what you just bought or did. The equivalent of how years ago some people would honk their

horns in the street to brag to the neighbors when they brought home a new car.

Imagine yourself on Facebook, minding other people’s business in the Newsfeed, and you see, “Elaine

just bought a St. John knit set at BlueFly™." Intrigued, you hustle on over to BlueFly and buy one

yourself.

Beacon had problems in the beginning, principally because it was an opt-out system, rather than an opt-

in. In one widely reported scenario, a website providing the purchasing info to Facebook deployed a

pop-up essentially asking, ‘do you wanna opt out?’. Apparently, a lot of people didn’t understand or

notice. And the result was that, in one instance, a husband’s jewelry purchase was broadcast to his

personal network – including his wife, who was the intended recipient of the gift.

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Now, there was more damage here than a spoiled gift. It also led to rumors among those who read

about it that the jewelry was not for his wife but for someone else. And a character is impugned by a

marketing app.

To their credit, Facebook responded quickly with program changes that, in a nutshell, made it an opt-in

instead of an opt out. One of the consequences of trying new things is that people screw up. Fortunately

the transient nature of web content and applications is such that things can get fixed quick.

Responding quickly was incredibly important because there were thousands of people very ticked off,

and activist group MoveOn.org was even driving a petition to stop the practice.

Since the jewelry and other incidents occurred last December, Facebook has changed the way it works.

As they describe it on their site, “When you send an action to Facebook, the user is immediately alerted

of the story you wish to publish and will be alerted again when they sign into Facebook. The user must

proactively consent to have a story from your website published.” iii

Personally, I am not a fan of Beacon. The people at Facebook pitch it as a service to customers (“Enable

your customers to share the actions they take on your website with their Facebook friends.”) I view it as

an invasion of privacy, regardless of the changes. Target does not broadcast my Swiffer® Mop purchase

on a billboard, why on earth does Facebook? That said, it should be pointed out that I am a Baby

Boomer, and we tend to have very high standards for privacy that younger generations do not.

Beacon’s certainly better than it was in terms of privacy. Well anyway. You may have no problem with

any of this.

Social Ads: What Social Ads does it that it delivers product information in a Newsfeed and Minifeed

when people perform an act related to the product advertised. If I told people I was going motorcycling,

then that statement might get paired with a text ad providing info on where to buy a specific brand of

motorcycle, or for a local cycle shop.

You can, by the way, opt out of this easily.

Here’s how Facebook pitches it:

Reach the right people.

Instead of creating an advertisement and hoping that it reaches the right customers, you can

create a Facebook Social Ad and target it precisely to the audience you choose. The ads can

also be shown to users whose friends have recently engaged with your Facebook Page or

engaged with your website through Facebook Beacon. Social Ads are more likely to influence

users when they appear next to a story about a friend's interaction with your business.iv

Social Ads offers a broad range of demographic targeting options. Obviously, the closer the post is

related to your brand, the better it will convert. You buy Social Ads with a self service application on the

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order of Google Ad Words or Yahoo Search. They can be bought by CPC or CPM. As such, it appears to

be an especially good tool for local retailers as well as larger brands.

(Taken from the Facebook Advertising Website)

The key distinction from a privacy perspective is that the ads are paired with posts made through the

Facebook environment. If you are willing to have your action posted in Facebook pairing it with an ad

doesn’t seem a breach of privacy. To me. You can also place such ads next to Beacon driven

announcements. Use your judgment there.

I don't opt out. I think Facebook needs to make money somehow, and this seems an excellent way to do

it.

WIDGETS AND APPLICATIONS

Widgets/Applications: Ah, widgets, the media darlings of H2 2007. Let me start by saying that I

am very pro-application, pro-widget. The idea that you choose the information and functions that are

brought to you on your pages is great.

There are tens and tens and tens of thousands of widgets out there. No one has any idea of the exact

count. Some are in incredibly broad usage – Slide’s photo application is an example. Something like half

of the Facebook users have this app in their Facebook presence. Another is FunWall, a service that soups

up your comment wall with multimedia.

But what’s interesting is that with all this supply of widgets and apps, relatively few brands have really

been able to take advantage of this phenomenon in a giant way. Why? Because they either haven’t tried

or they haven’t done it right.

I’m gonna focus on “haven’t done it right.” Let’s start with the example of Sony®’s Christmas Snow

Globe. I should tell you that I had never heard of the snow globe until I did a search on Facebook

marketing tips and found a post by Tim Faulkner on Valleywag.

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Here is a picture of Snow Globe:

v (Taken from ValleyWag)

Snow Globe was pretty but got less than 500 downloaders. Why? There’s no point in my even trying to

describe this better than Rodney Rumford did at FaceReviews, so I will print his comments verbatim:

Here is what is right about the Sony Snowglobes application:

* Creative idea

* Allows self expression and customization

* Visually exciting

* Uses notifications & mini-feed correctly

Here is what is wrong with the Sony Snowglobes application:

* No tabbed navigation

* No clear way to invite friends (I can’t believe they missed that!)

* It does not remember that I created a globe (very frustrating)

* After i create and send a globe i can’t navigate anywhere else (like to make a new one)

* No way to see which snowglobes my friends have created

* Text instructions are too long.

* Only allows for Christmas snowglobes. Too short of a product lifecycle window

* It makes me take an extra step to add the snowglobe to my profile page

* They promote 3 other apps in a very visually dominating way on the homepage (none of

which have any success)

* The about page does not even have an image of what the app does. DUH!

* The profile page does not have messaging that makes we want to add the app.

* No one from Sony or their ad agency has responded to any of the reviews written on the

applications wall.vi

There you have it.

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You can do this right, but it’s tough. Not tough and therefore don't do it, but rather tough and therefore

you should get help from someone who knows the space well. Frankly most brands need the help of a

company that lives eats sleeps breathes social media. The key is finding an idea that has real consumer

value, and then making it easy peasy to viral.

Not all Facebook applications fall into the category of “widgets”. When most people think of widgets

they think of “gadgets” – little doo-dads that do fun things like turn pictures into slide shows. There are

other more serious sorts of applications that do significantly more.

For example, we have a client called Real Time Matrix that offers a “Vortex” modular unit AND a

VortexMe Facebook app on which it lives in Facebook. What is different about Vortex is that it is

essentially a more serious application – no vampires here. It delivers real time content related to a

particular topic to the user’s desktop or pages on Facebook, iGoogle, or Netvibes. Video, audio, text, all

linked to their original locations online. A number of publishers have adopted this platform already, and

brands are beginning to as well. It really is worth a look and I will provide more info Monday.

Real Time Matrix and other companies that develop more serious apps are a critical part of why

Facebook has become so useful to business people.

App Sponsorships: But let’s take another example. Also from Sony. Sony Studios rebranded that

popular and (to those of us whom are sane) exasperating app called Vampires, which is from RockYou!

They rebranded it as part of their launch strategy for the Halloween picture 30 Scary Nights.

Results? Jeremiah Owyang, a great analyst at Forrester, reported the following results on his blog:

The campaign was only live for 3 weeks, and there were 59,100 sweepstakes entries. (success

was deemed at 10k, this clearly moved beyond that)The visits (I don’t know if they were

unique or repeated) were 11,642,051 for the bite page, and 17,652,567 for the stats page (I

believe these are part of the interactive experience of the game.vii

This time Sony clearly got it right. They leveraged a pre-existing community and an app that had already

proven its worth to consumers.

So should you make your own widget or other app? Perhaps, though perhaps you should consider

sponsoring an existing one instead. Or doing both. But again, getting the counsel of a company that has

social media in its DNA is critical. You can’t wing widgetry or widget sponsorship.

Widget Advertising: A couple of companies are offering graphical and text ads on their networks

of widget applications. Generally this is a REACH play, cheap tonnage. There is a role for that for some

brands. My understanding is that CPMs are running in the $2-$3 range, which is good eatin’ these days.

You can target by site and by some demo info, as well as activity level on Facebook.

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Interestingly, one can also advertise widgets in these widget ad networks, which could really grow your

install base if your app is any good. Here are a couple of examples I found:

(Taken from the Widget Summit website)

(Taken from the Gigya web site)

MAJOR PROGRAMS

So here’s the one some of you are waiting for. There are lots of brands that don’t have the people

resources to make events and participate in groups and buy key words. Facebook is certainly willing to

build a program for a large budget that involves any combination of the above or maybe custom tools.

My understanding of what constitutes large is $500K+.

CONCLUSIONS AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Justin Smith, the creator of a wonderful site called Inside Facebook (http://www.insidefacebook.com)

offers a veritable catalogue of marketing methods and specific details on his site. Far more than the top

line I have provided here. His comments are particularly relevant for brands who embrace the concept

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of guerilla marketing, whereas I try to focus solely on the needs of giant brands. But no matter how big

or small you are, you owe Justin’s site a visit. He's got plenty for big brands as well.

I am very thankful for his willingness to provide such info on his pages because it allowed me to enrich

the content in this post, and set me straight on two misconceptions I was under. I am also grateful for

the efforts of the other excellent writers and their posts I referenced in this document.

Also, I want to say that many traditional marketers will be put off by the number of options and the

seeming complexity of directions you can go on Facebook. Actually, it may really frighten you to know

that there are a number of OTHER tools that I didn’t mention above. There’s no one standard

executional platform like a :30 TV ad in social media. But the beauty of that is you get to develop a

program that is PERFECT for your situation.

i Find the complete post here: http://www.facebook.com/business/?pages

ii Find the complete post here: http://www.insidefacebook.com/2007/12/09/inside-facebook-marketing-bible-24-

ways-to-market-your-brand-company-product-or-service-in-facebook/

iii Find the complete post here: http://www.facebook.com/business/?beacon

iv Find the complete post here: http://www.facebook.com/business/?socialads

v Find the complete post here: http://valleywag.com/339675/why-big-brands-are-getting-facebook-wrong

vi Find the complete post here: http://valleywag.com/339675/why-big-brands-are-getting-facebook-wrong

vii

Find the complete post here: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/index.php?s=vampires