Tech

So it’s great having lots of Facebook Fans and it’s great having a platform to communicate with your customers online and build brand loyalty and awareness but when it comes down to it, there are precious few good examples out there of companies actually using Facebook for generating sales. While Dominos Pizza provide a good example of a company using Social Media to boost online orders, users can’t actually order a pizza on Dominos’ Facebook page.

Delta Airlines have begun trying to turn their Facebook presence into sales having recently launched the Delta Ticket Window, a Facebook application that lets Facebook users find, book and share flights onthe airline’s Facebook page. By doing this they have become the first brand to isolate the entire booking process inside Facebook. The ‘Ticket Window’ was introduced to keep the user on Delta’s Facebook Page for the duration of the booking process, as well as encourage them to share the flights they book with their friends. This could be a great way of spreading the brand through Facebook as, if you’ve just booked a flight, you’re probably going to want to let your friends know about it.

The use of Facebook as an e-commerce tool may be something that will appeal to many businesses in the future. After all, if you can sell your wares and communicate with your customers through Facebook, why would you need a website at all?

Okay so it’s been a few weeks since the Old Spice campaign took the internet by storm and there are now a few stats out there to gauge just how much of a success the campaign has been. Some of these figures are truly remarkable and show just how successful the campaign actually was, not only in making Old Spice a social media phenomenon through Twitter and Facebook, but by more than doubling sales within a month of the campaign being launched.

The videos themselves were viewed an unbelievable 5.9 million times in the first day alone and over 40 million times by the end of the first week, making Old Spice the number one, all-time most viewed branded channel on YouTube. During the first week of the campaign, Old Spices Twitter followers increased by 2700%, Facebook interaction went up 800% and traffic to OldSpice.com increased by 300%.

When it comes down to it, all the Facebook fans and Twitter followers in the world won’t mean much unless there is an effect on the bottom line and one of the most impressive results of the campaign has been the 107% increase in Sales of Old Spice in the month following the launch of the social media campaign.

A nice video from Simply Zesty showing just how fast social media is growing in the UK. Apparently Social Networking has become the most popular pastime in the UK while internet users are continuing to engage with the internet in more and more ways.

Quite surprisingly, a quarter of UK internet users write blogs with one third having uploaded to a video sharing site. In the past year alone, the number of people watching TV online has grown by 600% and 78% claim to research a product online before they make a purchase.

This continuing increase in internet engagement has obvious implications for brands and businesses. With a visitor coming from a social networking site 10 times more likely to make a purchase online than an average visitor it highlights the importance for businesses of utilising social media.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZHSZY8S9mA

A very innovative piece of marketing by those guys and gals at Calvin Klein Jeans. For one week only they have replaced several of their billboards in New York and LA with a QR code. Smartphone users can scan the code on the billboards and view an exclusive commercial on their phones which they can then share with their friends on Facebook and Twitter.

Despite the fact that Smartphones are still quite uncommon and most people cannot view the video, the campaign succeeds at generating a buzz and getting people talking about the brand. I’m sure passers-by are a lot more likely to stop and take notice of these giant codes than they are a typical billboard, even if they don’t know what the codes mean. Kudos Calvin Klein.

Another very innovative piece of marketing that has been all over the internet this past week. The Old Spice commercial that was released a few months back had been a viral hit on its own but Old Spice have used that momentum and built on it using social media to great effect.

Old Spice started posting YouTube videos featuring the ‘Old Spice Guy’ character from the TV commercials delivering personalised messages to fans on Twitter, Facebook and other websites. Regular fans got video responses, but the Old Spice guy also smartly targeted social media-savvy celebrities and bloggers to get the word out and achieve viral status. Perez Hilton (who the video below is directed at) has over 2 million Twitter followers who each would have heard him shout about this video from the rooftops. The Old Spice Twitter account accumulated tens of thousands of new followers and the YouTube videos amassed millions of views.

This campaign highlights the fact that advertising is changing and to keep up with the pack you need to get creative and using multi platform campaigns that have social media elements built in to them can only help.