Facebook Places: New Face Of Local Marketing

Marketers, specifically multi-location retailers and franchise organizations, were recently confronted with a new Facebook-marketing reality. What was once a relatively “top down” process of managing one’s brand from a single Profile Page, has now given birth to a “Child/Parent” dynamic that is hyper-local.

While Facebook Places launched almost a year ago, the improvements released recently send a clear signal to retail brands: think and act local. First let’s review what’s been rolled-out then we’ll have a look at the implications for brands with multiple locations.

New Enhancements to Facebook Places

Generally, the changes are focused on establishing a relationship between “Parent” Pages (heretofore called “Page”) and the “Child” Pages (let’s call these “Place Pages”) for each of the company’s locations or stores. Access to these features is still limited and accessed through a Facebook Account Representative. Specifically the following features have been added:

• Locations Tab: This optional tab would appear on the main Page. The Locations tab will display nearby locations for a user and enable them to search for locations by zip code.

• Linking Parent/Child Pages: A link to the Page will be displayed below the name of each Place Pages.

• Total Check-ins: An aggregated tally of Place Page Check Ins will appear on the Page.

• Places Page Management: This one is for the monitoring/moderation companies out there. Administrators for the Page will have admin access to the Place Pages.

• New Pages API features: This one is for the more advanced developers out there. Dashboards can now be created to edit all these new Place Pages efficiently using new API features, including the wall settings, custom tabs, etc. Particularly exciting is Check-in Deals can now be created and edited for multiple Place Pages.

Implications for Marketers with Multiple Locations

• Stake your Claim- Establish your Places It all begins with claiming your Place Pages and owning your corner of the Social Graph. Once established, you’ll be surprised how many of your customers begin checking in and “liking” those local stores right away.

• Add Local to your Social Plan Just when you thought you had Facebook marketing figured out for one Page, now there the many “children” to consider. How are you going to manage these Place Pages? Who will monitor and moderate Comments and Wall posts? What is the role of your store managers and franchisees? How will you track customer service at this local level? These challenges will scare off many of your competitors. Let it. You alone will own this busy intersection of Local and Social.

• Remember “Place” is just one of the Four P’s The Four P’s have been around since the 1960′s but until now, seemed absent from most Social Marketing plans. Product, Price, Place and Promotion all have a staring role in your new Social-Local Marketing Plan. Adding Facebook Deals and creative Check In promotions have the power of driving foot traffic and immediate sales. Always use this power for good, not evil.

• Never forget the fifth P, People Pay special attention to that which makes you successful in Social Marketing- the People. Your Fans have liked your Page with the expectation that they’re subscribing to news from and opening a line of two-way communication with your brand. Now they will do this, with the same expectations, but through a local lens. Exceed these expectations. Surprise. Delight. These People may be the best customers you’ll ever have.

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Outside Lands Music Festival: A Facebook Marketing Case Study for Live Events

Facebook can be a powerful tool for promoting live events. Not only can organizers create a Facebook Event for their conference, party, concert or other function, they can create a Facebook Page and applications for it, and encourage users to checkin via Facebook Places. This past weekend, the San Francisco’s Outside Lands Music Festival used several of these channels to achieve strong attendance, including selling out all 60,000 tickets for Saturday of the three-day concert.

Here we’ll look at how Outside Lands successfully used its Facebook Page and apps to promote the event, and how it could have improved its Facebook Places strategy to get more users to check in.

Facebook Page

The center of the Outside Lands marketing strategy was its Facebook Page. This was the fourth year of the festival, so when it came time to announce this year’s lineup it already had roughly 35,000 fans.

By placing both Like button to share the URL, a link to the Page, and a Like Box to directly drive Likes of its Page, Outside Lands gained a big batch of new fans when it announced the artists that would play this year’s festival. Fan re-sharing links to the website posted to the news feed by the Outside Lands Page also likely secured Likes for the Page.

Following the event, Outside Lands added a big Like Box social plugin to the home page of its website so it could secure more fans to market next year’s festival to. Now the Page has 67,380 Likes — double the amount it had a year ago and more than the total capacity of the festival.

People often buy tickets to events because their friends are going. To keep people excited and talking about the festival, the Outside Lands Page posted updates to news feed almost every day in the months leading up to the event, and ramped up to multiple posts per day in the last two weeks.

It posted compelling news and content such as updates to the lineup, ticket giveaways,  interviews and videos of artists set to play, and links to its website, Facebook Event, mobile app, and Twitter account. During the event, it posted photo albums and videos of performances, set time changes, and questions about what attendees were enjoying. The festival’s Page strategy could have benefited from reposting content uploaded by fans and recognizing contributors to engender additional good will.

Facebook Event and Apps

Outside Lands set up its official Facebook Event five months ahead of the festival date. Its info included a punchy description of the festival, the full lineup of artists playing, and links to its other web presences. The Outside Lands Page posted links to the Event multiple time, and RSVPs triggered news feed stories for the Event seen by the friends of attendees.

The festival worked with SonicLiving to develop a RSVP app for their Facebook Event that it embedded on its website. It allowed users to if which of their friends planned to attend and add their own RSVP. The app was a big success, with 5,961 monthly active users, meaning a significant portion of its total 21,714 ‘Attending’ RSVPs were made from the app.

The Outside Lands mobile app allowed users to login to Facebook and then post status updates about the festival from within the app. Quick links let them easily cross-post to Twitter and  add an Outside Lands Twitter handle mention or hashtag. The Facebook integration was relatively buried, so it only saw 2,955 logins in the last month.

Event promoters should strongly consider creating or licensing their own Facebook Event RSVP app for embed on their website. Outside Lands’ Facebook Event could have been better used as an archive of important information, such as set time changes, that otherwise could easily be missed in the churning stream of updates from its Page. A more prominent Facebook integration in the mobile app and a prompt to share some Outside Lands branded content and links to the news feed could have helped promote the event.

Facebook Places

The one major flaw in Outside Lands’ Facebook strategy was how it used Facebook Places. The address of the festival wasn’t added to the Facebook Page or Event, so neither had Places functionality — the ability for users to check in and notify their friends that they were at the festival. Without an official Place to check in to, users had to create their own unofficial Places.

Outside Lands still received approximately 7,000 checkins, but they were splintered across 40 unofficial Places. This prevented users from getting a comprehensive list of friends at the festival through the “Here Now” feature. It also reduced the likelihood of the festival being featured in aggregated Places checkin news feed stories that cluster checkins by multiple groups of friends into one big, compelling story.

The lack of an official Place also meant that users accidentally Liked the unofficial Places, costing Outside Lands’ Page valuable fans. All event promoters should be sure to add the address of their venue to their Facebook Page and Event to improve the checkin experience for users and gain more Facebook exposure.

As a whole, Outside Lands executed a strong Facebook marketing strategy. It provided compelling content, cross-promoted its presences and apps well, and was able to gain a lot of fans and checkins. These efforts will pay off next year when it comes time to market the fifth edition of the festival, as more people will have heard of Outside Lands and receive updates about it in their news feed.

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