Company: Beaverton Auto Group

Social Media Team: Ryan Lewis, President, Bonfire Social Media; Garrett Ira, Community Manager, Bonfire Social Media

Campaign Length: Nine Months

Result: Facebook interactions increased 1,021%, Facebook fans increased 172%, and Facebook cost-per-fan decreased 38.2% (averages)

The Challenge

Beaverton Auto Group consists of three auto dealerships: Beaverton Nissan, Beaverton Hyundai, and Damerow Ford. A locally owned and operated company, Beaverton Auto Group was quick to realize and understand the dramatic shift to social media in an industry that has relied heavily on traditional mediums.

Each of the three brands at hand have experienced their own significant challenges during the recession and natural disasters in Japan, which caused difficulty in maintaining a consistent supply of inventory. Bonfire was appointed to launch the company into the social space to build brand awareness, increase web traffic, nurture their communities, and ultimately drive sales.

The Customer Experience

Auto dealerships aren’t exactly known for fantastic customer service, and many customers dread stepping onto the lot. So instead of simply telling everyone how great their customer service is, we showed them by displaying photos of happy customers next to their brand new cars. Not only did this provide an avenue to build trust among potential customers, but it also helped us grow a relevant fan base—one filled with existing customers and not random visitors who want nothing to do with the product. The pictures quickly became a hit, with customers often asking for their pictures to be taken before the conclusion of the sale and showing gratitude in the comments.

We also provided exceptional customer service via social channels, further contributing to our highly interactive communities.

Incentives

One of the most significant shifts in social media in 2011 was the expectation of the consumer to be rewarded for connecting with brands online. Knowing this was a key to success, we wanted to do something fun to reward our fan base but also add value and generate business for our client.

We achieved this in several ways throughout the campaign, the first of which was exclusive service specials for Facebook fans. To make this process ultra-convenient for the customer, we enabled them to download and print the coupons right from Facebook vs. making them click through to another site. We also ran an iPad 2 Giveaway as part of our “fan giveaway” value proposition.

Facebook Advertising

Most auto dealerships use their Facebook pages exclusively to advertise. Not our clients.

We advertise where it was meant to be—using Facebook ads. They allowed us to extend our campaign reach significantly while allocating our budget only to our target demographics. Throughout the campaign, the ads were the highest generator of new fan growth than any other medium.

The Results

A well-executed strategy, optimized tactics, and a focus on valuable content yielded phenomenal results over our nine month period from February–October 2011. In fact, Beaverton Hyundai now has more Facebook fans than any Hyundai dealership in the nation.

Beaverton Nissan

Facebook Fans: +183.2%

Facebook Interactions: +668.4%

Facebook Advertising Cost-Per-Fan: -53.7%

Beaverton Hyundai

Facebook Fans: +260.5%

Facebook Interactions: +1,480.6%

Facebook Advertising Cost-Per-Fan: -62.4%

Damerow Ford

Facebook Fans: +73.4%

Facebook Interactions: +914.8%

Facebook Advertising Cost-Per-Fan: +1.4%

–By Justin Albano, Director of Business Development at Bonfire Social Media–

B2B marketers and business owners often ask me if the benefits of social media only exist in the B2C realm. The answer is a resounding no. The core concepts of social media: establishing your brand as an industry influencer, engaging with your customers, leveraging brand advocates, and nurturing leads along a sales cycle are just as powerful in connecting with companies as they are with consumers. In fact, B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those who do not [1], and 57% of B2B companies have acquired a customer through LinkedIn [2]. However, just like any other marketing tools, here are some best practices that will get you started in the right direction.

1) Know Your Objectives

What do you want? More customers? A better relationship with your customers? Both? As a biz dev guy I love “to do lists,” strategies, and most of all accomplishing objectives. Often, companies that I talk with are either focused on driving more leads or improving their brand’s perception and share of voice. Dependent upon your company’s objectives, you need to understand which, or both, of these categories your company falls into. Without defining your objectives, you stand no chance of measuring success or understanding the effect of your actions.

Action Items:

• Start macro and go micro. What do you really want out of your business? Do you want to grow a secure company that can be passed on to your kids? Do you have a quick profitable exit in mind? Start with your vision and let it set the framework for your strategies in every business facet. Then develop your bottom up action items, i.e. what will it actually take to get there?
• Set success metrics and milestones and review your progress regularly, not just at the end of the year.

2) Understand Your Demographics

It may seem obvious, but it never ceases to amaze me how few companies actually understand who their demographic is, what their buying cycle looks like, what motivating factors/events cause them to take action or where they get information on products and services.

Action Items:

• Create customer profiles that allow you to examine your demographics in a more intimate way. For example, Suzie is a mother of two who works full time, loves to play tennis and hike, cares about the environment, and prefers to watch movies rather than TV. Setting up these profiles gives you a great demographic snapshot and helps to focus your marketing efforts.
• Once you understand your demographic’s buying cycle, what info, education or resources can you provide to make their buying decision easier? This is not only important for brand awareness and brand perception, but should be the driving force behind your lead nurturing cycle.
• It is crucial for you to understand your industry’s keyword landscape. Which keywords are your demographic using to search for the products/services you offer or information related to your offering? Which keywords are obtainable? How do you currently rank for those keywords? Google provides some free tools for the Do-it-Yourselfers, but any digital marketing shop should help you build the list and give you the analytic insights that will enable you to make sense of it all.
• Discover which social platforms your demographics are already engaged with and focus your efforts there. Currently, there are over 800 million users on Facebook, 300 million users on Twitter, 116 million users on LinkedIn and only 60 million users on Google+ [3]. If you currently have an email database, run it through some social networks to discover who is already using which networks. This could save you mountains of time in the long run and allow you to target your unique demographics.
• Listen via social networks like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and forums, as well as online news sites. Once you know your demographic’s hangouts and keywords, you can listen to social conversations via CMS platforms like HootSuite/TweetDeck and by setting up Google Alerts that monitor articles, blogs and forums that are currently talking about your keywords.

3) Create Value Based Relationships

Social media is not the place for old-school messaging tactics, and the concept of protecting your secret sauce is dead. Company decision makers typically go to your website, not social networks, to learn the benefits of your products or services. Companies and consumers alike are actively searching for value-based content that makes their lives and their buying decisions easier.

Action Items:

• Offer value-based content. If you help companies streamline their processes, don’t just talk about how you do it; offer them free templates or How-To whitepapers that teach them how to be more efficient. Providing this type of value will convert prospects in to fans of your company and customers in to loyal brand advocates.
• Understand the difference between relevant content (e.g. interesting articles, company update s, etc.) and compelling content that provides value and motivates visitors to take action (either by providing contact information or requesting a demo).
• Monitor conversations within social communities, like LinkedIn discussion threads, and offer advice or input wherever possible.
• Don’t be afraid to give away the secret sauce. As we all know, understanding how to do something and actually doing it are two very different things. Some of Bonfire’s best clients are those who tried to do it themselves first and quickly realized that their time and resources are much more effectively spent doing the things that they already excel at rather than learning how to develop custom Facebook tabs, constantly managing social networks, writing blogs or producing webinars.

4) Leverage Your Current Marketing Mix

A common and dangerous myth is that social media replaces traditional and costly marketing channels with free messaging. This is simply not true. Social media is at its best when it is amplifying other marketing efforts or when integrated in to a well thought-out campaign.

Action Items:

• Install social plug-ins throughout your site. These allow visitors to share your content on their preferred social network quickly and with a minimum of effort.
• Utilize landing pages to capture leads and initiate your lead nurturing cycle.
• 59% of B2B purchase decision makers have used their smartphone to research products and services when they are considering purchases [4], so optimize your content and landing pages for the increasing number of mobile users.
• Include QR codes on in-print advertising and articles with compelling calls to action.

This is not rocket science and it’s not revolutionary. Instead, this is a new application of what the heart and soul of American business was when companies took the time to connect with their communities and develop relationships with their customers. As a B2B marketer your audience might be smaller than your B2C counterparts, but that means you can be much more targeted and strategic with your marketing. While a B2C marketer may segment their demographics down to niche communities, you can target specific decision makers within your target companies and develop a value-based relationship that not only nurtures the current sales cycle but also sets a positive framework for a long and supportive business relationship.

—-
Stat Citations
[1] Source: Hubspot, State of Inbound Marketing Lead Generation Report, 2010
[2] Source: http://www.hubspot.com/social-media-monitoring-in-10-minutes-ebook/?source=hspd-affiliate-PID-3701805-txt-ad-social-media-10-min-day-ebook-20110819&AID=10933127&PID=3701805&SID=skim1024X498223X8a5f920e568fa93e07c8561649950bf2
[3] Source: http://www.business2community.com/social-media/b2b-social-media-marketing-statistics-to-ponder-099980
[4] Source: http://socialmediab2b.com/2011/09/b2b-decision-makers-smartphones/#ixzz1jmUIeJul

We can’t say this very often, so listen carefully: Facebook just made a significant improvement to their platform for businesses.

We’re not talking about functionality this time, but instead about measurement. Ever since Facebook launched Insights with fan pages a few years ago, it has fallen short in a number of ways. Significant data was missing. Many calculations needed to be completed manually by individuals. The language was confusing.

Enter the new insights. While it still takes a bit of time to understand the terms (clearly they’re trying to reinvent the wheel this time around), the new Insights is much more conclusive and provides more answers to important questions for businesses. Let’s look at each page.

Important Metrics (Overview Page)

Facebook’s new measurement platform is focused primarily in 2 areas: “People Talking About This” (PTAT) and “Reach”. PTAT replaces “Monthly Active Users”, which always seemed to have a fuzzy definition among marketers. Nothing is fuzzy about PTAT, however, as it includes any action that creates a story in the news feed of the fan’s friends. This includes wall posts, likes, comments, shares, mentions, tags, event responses, photo tags, check-ins, & recommendations. Phew!

Reach is a very different metric and a bit more difficult to fully grasp. It refers to any unique person who has been exposed to your page or content on any channel, fan or not, including Facebook advertisements.

You’ll notice the Overview page provides a nice graph of correlations relating to (what they consider) your most important metrics, followed by an analysis of each metric for individual posts.

Questions Answered on the Overview Page:

Within my fan base of x fans, what is the maximum number of people I can possibly reach?

What % of my fan base shares our content with their friends?

Which type of posts draw the greatest number of shares? Which type reaches the most people?

What % of my fans click on my posts?

What effect does post volume have on PTAT and Reach?

What do my fans want to hear from me?

Likes

The Likes page is a bit like the previous Insights – it analyzes demographic information about the people who like your page, with one significant difference: it tells you where your likes came from. This is tremendously  valuable when analyzing where to spend your marketing dollars to maximize fan growth. Does you page grow organically? From referrals & partnerships? Paid search? Fortunately, this is no longer a mystery.

Questions Answered on the Likes Page:

Who are my fans?

Where did my fans come from?

Where do I need to spend my marketing budget next month?

Am I reaching my target audience?

What do I need to focus on to build a more relevant fan base?

Reach

Again, the Reach metric can be a bit misleading. This refers to the number of unique users who were logged into Facebook when your content appeared to them in any given context. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that if your reach is 13 million people, that 13 million people viewed your content, retained it, and will buy from you.

Still, the metric is worth mentioning and illustrates what your page can do beyond your fan base.

Questions Answered on the Reach Page:

How many people can I reach with my given fan base?

Which activities result in the greatest reach?

How often were my fans exposed to my content more than once in a given time period?

Does Facebook consider my content as important to my fans?

What other areas of the internet bring traffic to my page?

Which tabs are most popular, both in terms of views and fan conversions?

Do I need to invest in additional Facebook tabs? Should I remove any?

Talking About This

This page is likely the most important of the 3 subpages as it offers powerful information. When someone mentions your page to their friends, it’s the closest digital equivalent to word-of-mouth marketing we have – one of the most credible ways to spread your message online.

In addition to providing demographic information about the people who share your content, it also includes a handy graph of the viral reach. This is the number of additional people who potentially viewed your content because they are friends of your fans.

Questions Answered on the Talking About This Page

Which demographic cares enough about what I’m saying to share it?

How do people share my content? (tags, share posts, etc.)

When 1 person interacts with me, how many additional people potentially see my content?

As you can see, we can finally say that Facebook has done something right when it comes to tracking relevant metrics. While these new metrics can be a bit intimidating, it’s certainly a step in the right direction. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get people talking about our clients. :)

“Google+ skyrocketed to 40 million users in 2 months. It’s the Facebook killer.

I get more comments on Google+. It’s just, so much cleaner than Facebook.”

If you’re like me, you’ve read dozens, if not hundreds, of these type of statements over the last 4 months. Worse yet, step away and do a Google search for “Is Facebook Dead?”. You would think the platform disappeared overnight. People are actually starting to make these type of claims.

My intention here is not to bag on Google’s new and much-hyped platform. In fact, I love how clean and intuitive Google+ is; you don’t have advertisements, you don’t feel bombarded with messages and it isn’t inundated with spam as many other platforms are.

The issue I have is that we are running real businesses here. “Shiny Object Syndrome” isn’t allowed. Being cool and new is not enough and we can’t just bank on potential or assumptions. We have to look at the actual data or we could find ourselves investing our dollars in the wrong places and doing a serious disservice to our clients.

In MarketingChart’s latest set of social media data, we discover that Facebook is still far and away the most popular social network, both in terms of users and time spent.

As you can see, it’s not just that Facebook has 800 million users. People spend infinitely more time on the platform compared to all other web brands. When this is narrowed down ONLY to social networks, the differences are even more astonishing:

When we look at this broadly, it’s basically Facebook and everybody else. As we see “Like us On Facebook” right next to “Follow us on Twitter” everywhere we go, we often forget that a very high percentage of Twitter users don’t check back regularly despite having hundreds of millions of “users”. This isn’t the case with Facebook. Ironically, the number of active users is likely the reason people spend so much time on Facebook. You’ll probably find co-workers on LinkedIn, people who watch the same sports teams as you on Twitter, and people who share the same TV interests on YouTube. But you’ll find everyone on Facebook. Everyone.

And it doesn’t stop there. Although the market for new Facebook users has shrunk to the point where growth is nearly impossible, Facebook is still climbing in overall market share:

But let’s go back to Google+ for a brief moment. In terms of market share of visits, the platform has an extremely long way to go:

I hate to say the M-word, but it’s worth mentioning that MySpace still has them beat.

So what can we take away here? Does this mean Google+ is a dud? No. Does this mean you should re-invest everything into Facebook? Of course not.

The bottom line is, speculation is just speculation. Certainly there is reason to believe Google+ will be a big player at some point. But now? Unless you’re targeting a narrow group of early-adopters, it’s just another social network. It’s cleaner and easy to use, yes, but it doesn’t do anything Facebook can’t at this point and chances are your customers are not using it.

Everyone loves a giant killer and we’ve seen massive platforms fall in the past (tempting to use the M-word again here). Just remember to keep your focus on real data, avoid the hype, and focus your efforts where your customers actually are.

Ever since we discovered that social media was a viable tool to achieve real results in business, many companies have started seeking data to discover more about the reasons behind why people choose to follow and interact with brands on platforms originally created exclusively for individuals.

As we transitioned from traditional marketing to social, it’s tempting to ask questions about what we should do to get more fans, stay relevant, and exceed our success metrics.

After reviewing a recent study from ExactTarget, I realized we might be asking the wrong question. In a medium where customers are reluctant to allow brands to enter their bubbles, perhaps we should ask “What should we NOT do?”. It turns out that there are several reasons that people will not connects with brands online, all of which are becoming more important with every day that passes and the news feeds become more cluttered with information. Here are three reasons we can’t afford to ignore:

1. They don’t want to be bombarded with messages or ads.

“Bombarded” suggest that there is a ceiling to the amount of people and companies that your customers want to have included in their news feed. They just want the important stuff, the stuff that matters. This means they may not ‘like’ a page even if they are a regular customer of the business.

Making the choice to avoid direct promotion is a difficult one and may even be counter-intuitive for traditional marketers and salespeople. It is, however, absolutely crucial in gaining and maintaining a loyal fan base. When someone “likes” your Facebook page, think of it as the equivalent to subscribing to a magazine they love. They subscribe because the content is entertaining, informative, or beneficial in some other way. Would you subscribe to a television advertisement? How about a billboard or yellow pages ad? Of course you wouldn’t. Use Facebook advertising to advertise. Use Facebook pages to add value for your customers.

2. They don’t want companies to have access to profile information.

This one is a bit odd because “liking” a Facebook page does little to compromise personal information to the actual business. Yes, there are privacy concerns with Facebook as a platform itself, but business pages are not able to dig into profile information if the user has selected the correct privacy settings.

All of this aside, I can’t help but ask what is underneath the surface of this act of not wanting to give out information. I think it hints towards something much bigger: a lack of trust.

Trust is the single greatest factor in determining purchase behavior, creating a huge need for marketers to build trust with fans and customers. This is of course determined largely by the DNA and core values of your business, but there are certain behaviors that need to be adopted in social media to build trust – like being as responsive as possible. Simply responding to the vast majority of fans, whether the mention is positive or negative, is actually a way to build trust and also differentiate from competitors. Recent research has showed that more than 70% of companies completely ignore the customer service element of Twitter. This creates a nice advantage for companies whose streams are full of @replies, retweets, and mentions of their followers.

The bottom line here is, it’s irrelevant if we say we’re trustworthy. If we demonstrate that we’re trustworthy, however, it could mean a huge difference for our businesses. Actions speak louder than words. What level of trust do you think Starbucks and Comcast have with their customers?

3. They “don’t see the benefit of it”.

This might sound broad, but there is an important lesson for every brand in this one: make the value of your page as obvious as possible. This means you need to tell them WHY they should like your page, which forces you to be pro-active in putting them first. Why would they want to subscribe? Community? Information? Exclusive content or discounts? Whatever you’re doing for them, make it obvious. Simply adding “Like us on Facebook” in all of your communication mediums won’t get it done. “Like us on Facebook because you’ll be left out of something phenomenal” sounds a lot better.

So what can we take away here? Do a self-audit of your social media presence. Replace your sales copy with exclusive content and discounts. Get rid of your broadcasted message and ask your audience for their thoughts. Make them proud to display your logo on their profile as a business they support. Above all else, before you take action online, ask yourself “What’s in it for THEM?”.

I think Google is really missing a chance for success. Instead of launching Google + aggressively with apps and invites, they once again built a social product with a moat. They needed to build bridges to already established networks and call Facebook out on it’s proprietary operations. Google+ could be a better functioning Facebook without tackling the problem of user migration. And if Facebook tries to cut them off from using their data through their open API, Google could sue them on grounds of unfair business practices.

But I digress.

My point is, Google’s apparent hubris to create networks when they should be integrating them could ultimately destroy even their best products. People are settling on their networks so prying them away from Facebook or Twitter will be enormously difficult. Even the employee who created the concept behind circles has even left and moved to Facebook. The move raises eyebrows that Facebook will easily combat Google’s threat by creating their own form of circles using their friend’s list function.

If Google was serious about Google+ and does not want the technology behind it to ultimately folded into a separate product (I’m looking at you Wave), then they should have launched it in an entirely different fashion. Here are 3 ways I think they could have launched with greater success.

1. Launch with apps: influencers are not using browser based apps to decide if something is cool any longer. Influencers are using apps on their iOS or Android mobile devices. Facebook does not even have an iPad app yet! In addition, Facebook lost their best app developer because of Apple’s tough policies. Talk about a huge opportunity.

2. Enough with this slow invite nonsence: This tactic might work when you are still a small cool company, but reeks of elitism for a product that only succeeds when everyone is using it. Google already has enough computing power to manage the massive load, so why not take a chance. Make it cool by having everyone there.

3. Pull in all networks: Stop having an exclusive network and start building an inclusive network. Use Twitter oAuth, Facebook Connect and every other network login API available to pull in as many people to a central network. Think FriendFeed with much more capabilities. My wife loves Gmail, but when I mentioned Google+ (side note, really tired of searching for the + button on my iPad), she said she just got used to Facebook and would probably not switch for any reason. My point is this: the groundswell event is over, Facebook and to a much lessor extent Twitter won. The future of social media is integration and simplification.

I want Google to succeed. I really do. I just want them to know that this “toe dipping” launch game is tiresome and damaging. To me, this launch seems too safe. To be “cool” they need to break some rules or at the very least hurt some Facebook feelings. The risk for Google is great. One more failed social experiment and the community might stop taking them seriously.

In terms of digital communication, anonymity is awful. If social media (some would argue the internet in general) is expected to be taken seriously, anonymity is a brands biggest threat. Facebook recognizes this and is constantly evolving to provide access to tools and applications that can help brands grow their businesses online. It is also one of the reasons that Facebook is 1,000x bigger and better than Twitter. continue

TechCrunch is one of my all-time favorite blogs. TechCrunch has attracted some very insightful industry leaders from diverse backgrounds including: Venture Capital, Entrepreneurs, CEOs, Engineers and market insiders. Last weekend they invited Adam Rifkin to post his views about Facebook.

I think Facebook may have the perfect combination of user critical mass, smart engineers and a culture of empowering good ideas. They also have several revenue streams to fund it all. Below I have embedded Mr. Rifkin’s TechCrunch post below because I couldn’t do a better  analysis myself. I’d love to hear your feedback and hope you enjoy the read.

How Facebook Can Become Bigger in Five Years Than Google is Now

We have compiled the latest statistics reflecting current online marketing trends. Online social media platforms are continuing to grow rapidly and are becoming even more a part of our everyday life. Advertisers are taking advantage of this by moving marketing dollars away from traditional media and moving into the digital and interactive space.

Acronyms. The technology community loves them because they shorten long descriptive names. The problem is many business owners have little understanding of these acronyms. While there are “official” definitions (SEO, SEM, SMO, SMM), the lines are getting blurred between which technique falls under each label. I will try to simplify these acronyms and show the primary differences. continue