Category Archives: Social Marketing

PM Digital builds and manages Facebook pages on behalf of our clients, and last year, we invested in technology that enables e-commerce to be done directly on the Facebook brand page by housing all the client’s merchandise in a custom tab.  From a pricing standpoint, the options to facilitate e-commerce on Facebook range from inexpensive to very costly.

Overall, the volume of sales generated from Facebook e-commerce tabs has underwhelmed us.  Conversely, we are seeing volume picking up from referral links in Facebook posts going to the main website, resulting in sales.  We are learning what moves the needle in driving sales from a content perspective.

I wasn’t surprised when I read that JCPenney put their entire catalog of merchandise online in a shopping tab on Facebook. This tactic provides another avenue to put product in front of customers.  In other words, it can’t hurt, and unlike smaller retailers whose acquisition investments are designed to yield acceptable profitability, JCPenney most likely has ample R&D marketing dollars enabling what is an experiment to gain learning and flourish in the long term rather than requiring the initial investment yield an acceptable ROI out of the gate.

When a high-profile retailer like JCPenney launches an effort like this, the questions abound about whether or not it’s a best practice and one that should be emulated by other retailers.  There are pros and cons, but ultimately, assuming JCPenney’s deeper resources, this is a test; I believe it would be best for most retailers to take a wait and see approach.

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Social Media offers immediacy for fatigued or frustrated customers.

It’s commonplace across all businesses and industries. Press 1 for sales, 2 for customer service, 3 for shipping, 4 to be placed on hold for a human interaction, all other calls press 5. It’s become so well known, in fact, that many an astute customer has learned the bypass option of pressing zero.

This is clearly not a consumer-centric approach.

Although many jokes are in circulation about “tech support from India,” at least those calls get answered in a timely fashion, 24/7 by a friendly, helpful person albeit one with a strong accent.

Not all small or mid-size companies audit the “on-hold” time their customers spend awaiting a human interaction; if they did they would probably be appalled.

Given this fact, customers are choosing to utilize social media channels as the most expeditious opportunity to address their service and merchandising requests.  In this very public forum, companies who are not responsive are at serious risk for negative messaging and potential lost sales.

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Fan pages and engagement content can provide meaningful market research and shifts in marketing strategy.

For those who fall within the  45-54 or 55-64 + demographic segments, the word “faces” might summon memories of the awesome guitar rhythms and vocals of the early 70’s band Faces that included Ron Wood (now of Rolling Stones fame), and perennial crooner Rod Stewart. Some might even hum a few bars of their hit song “Stay with Me.”  Those in the 45 and under crowd seeing the word “Faces” are more likely to think of  Facebook, the most famous harbor for millions of faces, where just about everybody now goes at least twice a day.

Now that there are over 500 million users on Facebook, or a whopping 22% of all internet users, there’s a lot that can be gleaned from the faces on this platform.  Since the earliest marketers began trying to segment populations in order to make efficient use of their budgets, the task has been to try to envision the end user, and lump them into logical groups for targeting purposes.

PM Digital recently launched an enormously successful contest on behalf of a leading client.  Because the contest was created with a very astute understanding of the fan’s appetite for their product, over 25% of the total fan base participated. The contestants submitted head-to-toe photographs of themselves, which made it easy to do a quick demographic and psychographic assessment. 

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