When developing an overall web strategy, and in particular a social media strategy, a common question is whether to launch new initiatives as part of the existing corporate fan page, or create a new campaign-specific page for that initiative. This can apply to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, or any number of other social media platforms.

This is essentially a social media strategy problem, with parallels in the question of extension brands versus sub-brands. Here are some questions that are helpful to ask while developing your web strategy and your social media strategy in order to help determine the best web strategy:

1. Who uses the main corporate page? Customers? Employees? Investors? All of the above? Is your new social media initiative appropriate to that audience (or to those audiences)?

2. Who is the target market for the new product or promotion? If it’s the same as your overall brand target market, consider extending the main page. If your new web strategy targets a different market or a subset of your overall market (e.g. only the younger demographic), you may want to create new social media pages.

3. How does the tone of the new initiative compare to your primary brand voice? If you’re going for something edgier that could potentially alienate fans of the main page, you might want to create social media new pages for the new initiative.

4. Does the new initiative have geographic limitations? If you’re doing a limited product test launch or an online promotion that won’t be available to all of your customers, consider separate social media pages in this case.

When creating new social media pages, it’s often a good idea to link to the new pages from your main corporate pages, and vice versa, unless there’s a need to maintain a more strict separation in terms of your overall web strategy.

AlterSeekers is a brand promotions agency in New York focusing on promotions consulting and planning, web strategy, social media marketing (including Facebook strategy), go to market strategy, and overall strategic planning. For more information see AlterSeekers.com.

Continued from Part 1…

There’s another factor that’s even more critical in determining the right balance of prizes in your promotions planning:

Customers vs Non-Customers: As part of your online promotion strategy, you may run a promotion that targets current customers who are already brand loyal, to encourage continued or incremental purchasing. On the other hand, your promotions planning may target consumers who currently prefer another brand or are not currently purchasing in your category to try to entice them to purchase your product instead.

In the case of non-customers, promotion consulting research shows that a larger number of lower-value prizes will work best. This is because your targets currently perceive a negative overall value of switching to or otherwise purchasing your product (or they would already be doing so), so they need the assurance of readily available prizes in order to expect a more positive outcome from your product. In considering these targets as part of your online promotion strategy, offer several small but desirable prizes to encourage them to switch to your product, which will erode their negative perceptions and encourage them to purchase.

With current customers and brand loyalists promotion consulting research shows that the opposite is true. They already expect a positive outcome from purchasing your product, so the prize is just icing and serves to increase their brand preference. So in general, these customers will be more interested in the possibility of winning a single large prize. Your promotions planning for current customers should offer only one valuable prize.

Thinking about these factors will get you started in the right direction. There are many other variables that go into good promotions planning, and the best strategy should be determined on a case-by-case basis as part of your overall online promotion strategy.

AlterSeekers is a brand promotions agency in New York focusing on promotions consulting and planning, web strategy, social media marketing (including Facebook strategy), go to market strategy, and overall strategic planning. For more information see AlterSeekers.com.

When doing promotions planning, the question inevitably arises: how should we structure our prizes? As with any good question, the answer is:  it depends on your audience and the specific goals of your online promotion strategy.

Given a fixed budget, the main problem in structuring your prizes is to find the right balance between a small number (often just one) of high-value prizes, versus a large number of low-value prizes.

It’s important to note during your promotions planning that what you’re trying to impact is not the actual customer satisfaction or perceived value upon using the product. Instead you’re trying to impact the combination of the customer’s expected (or anticipated) value of the product and prize(s) together.

There are a number of factors to consider in our online promotion strategy that impact what sort of prize structure will be most enticing to your target audience. Two of the most critical are 1) whether you’re targeting current customers or non-customers, and 2) how risk tolerant your target audience is.

Risk Tolerance: It’s important to recognize in your promotions planning that your targets may be more or less risk tolerant. All else equal, a more risk tolerant audience will prefer a single high-value prize, and a risk averse audience will prefer many smaller-value prizes.  As part of your overall online promotion strategy, it is important to balance the risk tolerance of your target(s) against the number of prizes you offer.

Coming up in Part 2… the #1 factor in determining your prize structure!

AlterSeekers is a brand promotions agency in New York focusing on promotions consulting and planning, web strategy, social media marketing (including Facebook strategy), go to market strategy, and overall strategic planning. For more information see AlterSeekers.com.

With the current stampede to get on the social media marketing bandwagon, many companies find themselves surprised by the lack of customer engagement on their newly minted Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or YouTube sites. What happened? If you build it, they will come, right?

Wrong.

Many brands treat social media as one more channel to blast their one-way message at customers. This method worked in the days of TV because you essentially had a captive audience. Their program was interrupted, and they could either get up for some cheese doodles or sit tight and watch your commercial. Social media offers no such advantage. People come to your social media site if they want to, or they don’t come at all so a solid social media marketing strategy is critical to success.

Marketers inevitably develop a case of marketing myopia around their brand. If I get up every morning and go to Widget X Incorporated, then I tend to think about Widget X a lot. And every time there is the slightest bit of news around Widget X, I’m very interested. In most cases, your customers are not nearly so engaged with your product or category as you are.

So what are your customers looking for out of your social media marketing initiatives?  Fun, value, and relevance. A good social media strategy should address these categories.

Fun: Do you have games, videos, funny pictures, or other content that will make people want to come to your page and share what they find with their friends? A successful social media strategy attracts users by entertaining them.

Value: Do you offer coupons, freebies, hold sweepstakes and contests, and provide useful information? Social media thrives on the ‘give something to get something’ idea.

Relevance: Are your pages relevant to your target audience and their lives, and not only to you? Your social media strategy must ensure that your brand is relevant to what you’re offering or your prospects will purchase elsewhere.

AlterSeekers is a brand promotions agency in New York focusing on promotions consulting and planning, web strategy, social media marketing (including Facebook strategy), go to market strategy, and overall strategic planning. For more information see AlterSeekers.com.

WOMMA, the Word Of Mouth Marketing Association, is the author of the Ethics Code of Conduct, known as the WOMMA Code. The Code helps to define best practices, unacceptable practices and baseline rules for word of mouth marketing to help companies define their social media marketing strategy and web strategy.

Why is this of concern to promotional marketers? Because the nature of online promotion strategy is changing: for instance, social media marketing has become the hottest channel in today’s marketing mix, the same way that blogging has become de rigueur as an effective method for brands to interact with consumers. However, a murky area exists when blogs start to promote brands and products. Since blogs have traditionally been viewed as “grassroots” and editorial, it creates a red flag when bloggers are seen as endorsing brands and products. Questions are raised: Is it now advertorial? Is the blogger being paid for his or her endorsement? Is it honest? And has the blogger been transparent about the effort?  In other words, has the blogger blatantly disclosed that he is promoting the brand or product? Companies need to be transparent when integrating blogs as part of their overall online promotion strategy.

In answer to questions like these, the WOMMA Code creates an environment of trust between consumers and marketers. It seeks to prevent unfair, deceptive or misleading marketing practices from occurring in a company’s web strategy.

Similarly, in the social media marketing space, take the example of a Facebook fan page for a brand. Consumers who are fans on Facebook can freely post rave reviews of a product, or openly post complaints; but does it cross the line when the brand itself posts rave reviews, posing as a consumer? The WOMMA Code would clearly point out, “Yes, that is a violation of ethics.” Social media is a resource that is “of the people.” It needs to remain a safe space where consumers feel free to share, and not a venue where companies can misrepresent themselves in the pursuit of the almighty bottom-line using this web strategy. When a brand DOES post on its fan page, it must do so in the most transparent way, with full disclosure.

You can read the entire WOMMA Code at http://womma.org/ethics/code/. Since the WOMMA Code directly affects marketer’s ability to virally share in today’s marketplace, marketers would do well to heed both of these resources in the planning of social media marketing and blogging initiatives.

AlterSeekers is a brand promotions agency in New York focusing on promotions consulting and planning, web strategy, social media marketing (including Facebook strategy), go to market strategy, and overall strategic planning. For more information see AlterSeekers.com.