Acquiring Fans on Facebook

Research from Efficient Frontier (Jan 2012) found that on average, brands are acquiring fans at a rate of 9% per month.

Are your fans/likes growing at this pace?

If you regularly post updates but get little feedback from fans, it may be because you are talking rather than conversing. Because, people don't go out and "like" random pages for businesses that they haven't already used, or plan to use.

Customer Engagement is key

Facebook isn't just about broadcasting your news; it's about customer engagement and via the sharing of interesting content, enhancing your brand awareness to the friends of your Facebook page fans.  The above image is from the Mothercare UK Facebook page, who regularly post 'Facebook Exclusive' offers, giving their customers a reason to 'like' them and stick around.

To increase engagement on your own business Fan page, consider who your customers are and how your customers want to engage on Facebook (i.e. helping shape the brand, contests, visual experience, events and incentives for sharing).  Secondly, consider what they search for on Facebook, where else are they active, take a look at the other related pages where your target market are regularly commenting, what is a hot topic?

Who are your customers?

Along with viewing popular conversations/engagement, questioning what your fans want from your page and considering who your fans are/will be, will help you develop engaging content.

For example, for hotels, guests' needs will differ from those interested in family breaks to business trips; fun breaks to activity bases; somewhere quiet to a lively restaurant; local attractions to events at the hotel.

Use Facebook to seek out and engage with local news stories and regular events where there may be a potential for a tie-in with your page. For example, hotels could offer group rates to an event or conference organiser and invite the organiser to tag the hotel page when mentioning the discount for the event to attendees/delegates.

Goals and expectations

When tasked with the objective to 'enhance your Facebook page acquisition rate', two good places to start are establishing goals for your Facebook page and considering why your target audience would like your page / what are they expecting?

As a means of example, we have listed below ten goals for a Hotel Facebook page and ten reasons why a fan may want to join a Hotel Facebook page.

Ten goals for a Hotel Facebook page

1. Extend marketing campaigns
2. Community engagement (attract fans of your friends) / be a story teller.
3. Generate extra web traffic
4. Boost brand awareness and increase brand loyalty
5. Support customers and receive instant feedback
6. Increase bookings to accommodation
7. Increase bookings to events
8. Increase bookings to conference and meeting rooms
9. Keep up with the competition
10. Obtain further insight into customer base (using Facebook insights)

Ten expectations / reasons why a customer may 'like' a Hotel Facebook page

1. They are passionate about their location (images)
2. They let me know about events happening in the area
3. They like to share with me the special Facebook promotions
4. They inspire me to get creative in the kitchen
5. They are eager to know how the hotel can make our stay even more comfortable
6. Should I post a recommendation on the page, my Facebook friends will see this
7. They keep me up to date on those who supply the hotel
8. They are helpful and generally care that I have had a pleasant stay
9. They share their latest reviews from customers and citation websites (i.e. Trip Advisor)
10. They make me feel part of their story

We hope you can relate these goals and reasons to your own business and that it will enable you to think more strategically about growing your Facebook page popularity.

Should you require assistance for social media strategy and growth, please visit our Social Media Strategy page or contact our Sales team today to discuss your requirements.

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Geek Video of the Month

Jack (year 10 student) joined Rocktime last week on a two week work experience placement. He has mostly been working with the web developers as this is a career he is considering pursuing.

Rocktime's Search Marketing team tasked Jack with a quest to find this month's 'Geek Video of the Month'. Jack had to source three potential Geek videos and one would be chosen for this month's Geek Video of the Month. And here it is!

We are pleased to announce that Jack has been very successful. He interpreted the brief well, did some good research and was able to provide creative ideas. Jack's choice of Geek video is certainly worthy of being voted 'Geek Video of the Month'. It is truly awesome!

The Geek video was created by Microsoft in 2011 titled, "Productivity Future Vision" it has been very popular with over 4m views. The video looks at what technology will be like in 5 to 10 years time, focusing on how people will get things done at work, home and on the go. The video is six minutes long, but well worth the watch. Our favourite part is the on the go interactive smart phone booking of a charity concert.

As with all visionary projections it can stir up controversial comments but we think it is a good way to demonstrate how so many of the science and technology features in the video are already coming to life just 2 years later.

To find out more about the video we found a related article over at Computer World, titled:
"Why Microsoft's vision of the future will really happen".

Other videos sourced by Jack include:

A very recent (3 weeks) ago news of a Transparent Mobile Phone prototype developed in Taiwan and a trailer of the World's first and only 3D drawing pen the '3Doodler'. The video outlines how the 3D drawing technology works and sectors that may be interested in using the tool.

Potentially Jack may win Geek video of the month for April too.

Thanks so much Jack for providing such great content, it has been great working with you. If you continue with the blog you created, please do let us know about it over on Twitter @RocktimeSocial.

Author: Sarah Griffiths & Jack Williams

Geek Video of the Month

As we like to give focus on the blog to rising trends, this month's Geek Video of the Month, comes via the Hybris Software YouTube channel, titled "Shopping Gets Sexy with Hybris" the video includes technology such as in-store NFC tags, gesture-based product navigation and geo-fenced alerts.  The video highlights that "window-shopping" need not be a low margin activity and shows how window shoppers can socially engage with a product, even when the shop is closed.

For more information on NFC tags, read our latest blog titled is; NFC the next big thing?

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Is NFC the next big thing

NFC stands for “Near Field Communication”,  it is a set of standards for (NFC enabled) smart-phones and similar devices to establish radio communication with each other by touching them together or bringing them into close proximity.   It is known in the mobile market, predominantly for mobile payments. 

NFC technology is not new and the first NFC enabled phone was released back in 2006, since 2011 we are seeing more and more reports on the opportunities available of using NFC in marketing campaigns.  

The above image is from a 2011 campaign run via Nokia with Proxama (NFC and Mobile Commerce Specialist) in Vox Cinemas.  Details of the campaigns were widely reported; The Drum online magazine covered the campaign here.  We feel that this ‘mobile content delivery’ is less clunky than the traditional QR Codes for engaging with offline information. How Stuff Works: What is an NFC Tag?

Mid January our favourite Internet Marketing Blog Econsultancy, reported five trends from CES that marketers need to know.  Guess what? NFC made the list. 

This month’s geek video comes via the Hybris Software channel, titled: Shopping Gets Sexy with Hybris” the video includes technology such as in-store NFC tags, gesture-based product navigation and geo-fenced alerts.  The video highlights that "window-shopping" need not be a low margin activity and shows how window shoppers can socially engage with a product, even when the shop is closed. We love this approach. We are watching trends in NFC Smartphone adoption with interest and noting those using the technology within their digital marketing strategies.  

Mobile/Social Marketing is becoming a lot less about broadcasting information in a more succinct way, it is moving more towards engaging customers in digital experiences with your information. 

NFC allows the tech savvy consumers to engage, interact and communicate with brands. We will keep you up to date with others using NFC on this blog.  Should you wish to help your company stay ahead of the digital, mobile and social news, talk to our sales team today about our Integrated Marketing Services. 

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Google Shopping Changes in UK from February 13th 2013

Google Shopping paid for service 

What is happening to Google Shopping / Google Merchant Centre?
Google Merchant Centre, one of Google’s free products for eCommerce, is due to become monetised and linked to AdWords, here in UK (also in Germany, France, Japan, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Brazil, Australia and Switzerland) as of tomorrow. There will no longer be a free service.

Google is planning to roll out a new commercial model for Google Shopping, built on Product Listing Ads (PLA). To keep Product Search listings active on Google, businesses will need to set up a Product Listing Ads campaign in Google AdWords.

Product Listing Ads are ‘AdWords search ads’ that include rich product information, such as product image, price and merchant name. Whenever a user enters a search query on Google.co.uk relevant to an item a business is selling, Google will automatically show the most relevant products along with the associated image, price and product name.

When is Google Shopping / Google Merchant Centre changing?
In order to give merchants time to make this transition and optimise their campaigns, Google plans to roll out the new model gradually, via several steps. The first major change will take place on February 13, 2013, when visually cleaner results for shopping queries, including some new commercial formats on Google.com that will display products in a single unit, will replace current search results. These new commercial formats will be labelled as "Sponsored" and appear in the space currently occupied by AdWords ads.

Google Shopping sponsored  ads

The full changeover is expected to have been implemented sometime in June 2013.

Why is to Google Shopping / Google Merchant Centre changing?
Google is quoted as saying these improvements will create a better shopping experience that will benefit both shoppers and merchants. Shoppers will find products in one convenient place and quickly be able to compare features, find the best prices, read reviews, and identify great merchants -- while advertisers will be given more granular control over product listings and traffic.

Impact of Google Shopping / changes:
Many of our eCommerce clients who are performing well in organic search and have benefited from Google Shopping need now to decide whether they should in fact also consider a paid search campaign, as part of an Integrated Digital Marketing Strategy. Google Product Search allows consumers to easily find product listings and compare products by relevance and price in a Google search. Until now the registered Merchants streamed products via an XML feed with price, image, attributes etc, directly into the Merchant Centre, which then automatically showed up in the Google Shopping and Search Results.

Regular updates of the XML feed ensured that the prices, product description and stock levels were kept current.

Google Shopping free XML feed

To some extent, this move to a paid inclusion model, or ‘paid for service’ of the shopping results may help create a more level market by allowing smaller and larger businesses to equally bid for top positions. However, businesses with tighter profit margins and smaller budgets will find this new market may also be restrictive when it comes to assigning budget.

It will be interesting to see if Google Shopping will overtake eBay as the world's leading global commerce platform. Google is already pushing down the natural search results of Amazon in USA where Google Shopping is already being used and accounts for 11% of overall paid search spend.

It is doubtless that Google offers some of the most amazing free products from Google Analytics to Webmaster Tools, from regular products most of us already use like Gmail, YouTube, Picasa, Translate, G+, Blogger to some of the more niche and useful products like Creative Sandbox Gallery and Research Library in ‘thinkinsights’

Google offers many useful free products

How much will Google Shopping cost?
Paying for a product which was traditionally free is always a hard sell-in but with Google Shopping it really is still a great product for busy eCommerce businesses. What other online location is there that has 90% of all UK search traffic potentially looking for products to purchase.

Google is offering a short discount to merchants who create a Product Listing Ad campaign before 12 April 2013. The offer is a £75 credit for new account set ups in AdWords and a 10% monthly credit until the end of June, if the account is set up and launches PLAs before 12 April. The Merchant can pay in to the account and use it as a credit to pay for the ads that are driving customer traffic to their business website.
Google has uploaded a video to YouTube to help explain the Google Shopping changes, implications, cost to retailers and the growing importance of Mobile in Product Search.

Prices will depend on a few factors:

Cost-per-click (CPC)
The advertiser will pay each time a searcher clicks on their advert. No more than the maximum CPC will be charge by Google each time the advert is clicked.

Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) Percentage.
The advertiser sets a maximum percentage of the final sale value they are willing to pay. Once a customer clicks on a product listing advert, any purchase they make within 30 days of the click that can be directly attributed to the click will be charged a percentage by Google of the final sale value that was set.

Shopping product advert positions are determined by the Advert Rank.
Advert Rank of a product each time a relevant search is entered in to Google.
The Advert Rank is a score based on maximum CPC or the CPA percentage of how much a business is willing to pay Google and the quality score. The quality score is a measure of how relevant the search query is to the most relevant product in your entire Merchant Center product feed.

Product Listing Ads are visually much more appealing to searchers compared to traditional sponsored links on the search results page and businesses have reported that running PLA’s have experienced an above average click through rate.

Much of the Google search position results have to be paid for nowadays yet 46% of searchers click on the website in the first position on first page in the organic search results. It is more important than ever now that product optimisation be factored into an eCommerce website marketing budget. E-commerce is experiencing double digit growth globally and is forecasted to be a $1T industry by 2017 and Google has publicly acknowledged that 40% of their revenue is in the retail / e-commerce vertical.

Now is a good time to really build a strong eCommerce strategy to combat the competition and Google Shopping’s price comparison Internet marketplace and Google Enhanced Campaigns, also launched this week, will help businesses wanting to be relevant on paid search and for searchers to have a consistent online experience across a multiple number of devices when they are buying a product. Two years ago, Rocktime designed a Product Description Optimiser Tool. I think we get plenty more use out of it this year!

There are a number of blogs Rocktime has written over the last few years relating to previous updates to Google Products Feed in 2011,  Global eCommerce Opportunities in November 2012, and an ongoing update on the development in Social Commerce, What is Social Commerce and Social Media meets Commerce. We hope you find these useful!

If these sort of eCommerce search result questions are something you want to know more about and how to determine where your marketing budget can best be spent for a good return on investment then you are welcome to call our Sales Team on 01202 678 777 or email your queries for a chat.  



Author: Fiona Anderson

Pinterest for Business

Pinterest, once classed as the third most popular social network in the US, is a visual social network for 'pinning' images and videos to users' own or other pin boards (which are collections of 'pins' usually with a common theme).  The social network encourages it's users to download a "pin it" button on their computers, so that they can share/pin any images/videos they find on the web, that they want to share. The pinners/users distribute your content for you, by repinning, liking and sharing.

Find out more about the social network over at our: Introduction to Pinterest Blog published in February 2012 and our Utilising Pinterest for Brands and Business Blog published in March 2012. 

In November 2012 Pinterest launched brand pages for businesses. After being active on Pinterest, the social network will allow you to advertise your website address (top level domains only), so that the users of Pinterest can find out more about you.  Once verified, you will receive a 'tick of authority' next to the website name.  

Via a business's landing page Pinterest are helping businesses get the most out of their network by providing advice on how businesses can use the network to:

• Tell their story
• Build a community
• Send traffic to the website
• Identify what is working well and how to develop further.

Find a useful 'pin board' of Brands and Businesses using Pinterest here:

http://pinterest.com/mshahab/brands-businesses-blogs-on-pinterest/

The above image is from a recent Pinterest Christmas campaign from Joules Clothing.  They invited Joules Clothing fans to Pin 5 items that they would love to get to Christmas, on their boards and email notify them via email of their Pinterest Board URL.  The campaign was integrated with Facebook, with a custom Pinterest tab.

The benefits of the Pinterest campaign to the brand include:

• Organic sharing of their products around Xmas time.
• Profiling the brand to a creative community which suits their target market
• Increased traffic to the website on product pages.  
• Gain increased followers on company Pinterest board and Facebook for further campaigns.

The Flashlight Search Marketing team are briefing a number of clients on how to use this social network for business growth, with focus on campaign integration.  

If you require any assistance learning how this social network can benefit your business, visit the links listed above and should you require further assistance talk to our sales team.

Author: Sarah Griffiths (AKA Pinterest Addict)

Geek Video of the Month

Google has defined the definition of 'Geek' as a person with eccentric devotion to a particular interest.

So it seems fitting that this month's Geek Video gives praise to the 22 year old Digital Film Design student 'Kaleb Lechowski'.

Lechowski received attention from Hollywood executives after they viewed his six minute sci-fi animated film, titled 'R'ha'.

Thanks to his impressive work, he is now headed to Hollywood and there is talk of the potential of making a full feature movie from his ideas.

View the talked about short above and find out more over at Mashable about; what the experts say, the films that inspired the short movie and what's next for the talented student.

Mashable Entertainment Article: 22 year olds sci - fi short gets Hollywood attention

Congratulations Kaleb, we are looking forward to seeing your name in the credits list, when the time is right for you to launch your full featured movie.

Author:  Sarah Griffiths