There are two big challenges in using Facebook for business: building the number of ‘Likes’ for your Page and getting your posts noticed on a user’s Wall among the numerous posts by a user’s Friends and other Pages that are so easy to ‘Like’ these days. Many businesses are running competitions on Facebook as a way to address these challenges.
Big brands are finding competitions a great way to get to the top of the Facebook numbers game. On December 17, 2010 The UK’s Independent newspaper reported that Kit Kat’s Break by Break competition “in combination with the advertising campaign around the brands 75th birthday has led to fans flocking to the brands’ Facebook page. 20,000 new users ‘liked’ the brand on December 15, as of 12:00 GMT on December 16 Kit Kat has attracted nearly a further 2,000 unique likes and jumped straight to number 8 in the daily fan charts.”
Many smaller businesses, though, are not using these competitions effectively and many are even running them badly, finding themselves in trouble with Facebook and their ‘Fans’. So before you start your Facebook Competition, consider these 5 points:
You commonly see Businesses running competitions that are against Facebook’s Guidelines:
- Running competitions directly on their Facebook Page.
You are required to use a competition application must not run a competition directly on your Wall. - Having users automatically enter by ‘Liking’ a Page.
You may have them first ‘Like’ your Page but this must lead on to entering a properly set up competition. - Conditioning entry in the promotion upon a user providing content on Facebook, such as posting on a Wall of a Page, uploading a photo, posting a status update (such as asking Friends to ‘Like’ the Page).
Any interaction a user takes must be using the competition application and not directly on your Page. - Notifying winners on their Facebook Wall. Most people do not realise that Facebook requires that you notify the winner by email or other means, but not using Facebook in any way to do so.
These businesses are either not aware of the Guidelines or feel that their activities will not be picked up by Facebook, but very often a Page owner wakes up to find that his Page has been removed and is then in a panic to appeal to Facebook to have it returned. It’s very hard to convince a small business of this danger when they see so many other businesses in its own industry doing it and building up a large number of ‘Likes’ – somewhat similar to the challenge ‘white hat’ SEO’s have when clients see ‘black hat’ tactics working for competitors.
According to Krishna De, Managing Directory of Biz Growth Media,
“Typically this has happened for significant sized brands with a sizeable community, for example the French retailer http://www.facebook.com/Kiabi.france which was deleted for breach of Facebook promotion guidelines in December. When this happens you can make an appeal to Facebook, and under some circumstances pages have been known to be re-instated as was the case for Kiabi. The reinstatement will not happen within a matter of hours – in a case I was involved in with a client who had breached Facebook Promotion Guidelines, after we made an appeal to Facebook, the Page was eventually reinstated 48 hours later. And you can be sure that was a restless 48 hours for the marketing manager responsible for the Page. It’s highly unlikely that they will breach the promotion guidelines again as they understand the consequences.”
So before you set up a competition that is against Facebook’s Promotions Guidelines, imagine yourself in the position of appealing to Facebook to restore your Page, instead of imagining that Facebook won’t see that you are not following their Guidelines. Also make sure that you check the Promotions Guidelines on a regular basis so that you are up to date when there are any changes.
2) You must also consider legal issues that may apply to your Facebook Competition
In addition to Facebook’s own terms, your competition will need to follow the laws of your own locality and the localities of anyone that you want to enter your draw. For example, in certain jurisdictions you are not allowed to run a sweepstakes – a competition where the winner is selected by chance rather than by skill – so if your competition is a sweepstakes you must ensure that individuals in such countries (currently Belgium, Norway, Sweden and India – according to Facebook) cannot enter.
3) An effective Facebook Competition must fit in with your overall Marketing Plan.
Most of the big brands that are topping the Facebook ‘Like’ charts, like KitKat as noted above, have put a lot of money and resources into their marketing plans and their competitions are inline with their research and other marketing activities. Smaller businesses can still use competitions effectively, but many of these competitions are not hitting the mark.
– Does the competition fit for your target market?
I was looking at the Facebook Page Insights of the client of a colleague who was concerned that they were not taking his advice on following Facebook’s Guidelines. The demographics for the Users that have ‘Liked’ the page, mainly gained through competitions that didn’t comply with Facebook’s Guidelines, were not inline with the target audience the business wanted for its page.
The demographics matched that of the marketing staff of the business, but not the older, more affluent and male clientele the business was looking to attract.
It’s important to look at your target market and determine:
- Are your targets the type of people to enter competitions?
- What type of competition would your targets be likely to enter?
- What prizes would be of interest to your targets?
I’ve seen articles online extolling the popularity of competitions and those saying that people are not interested, so it’s important that you look at your own prospects carefully and decide the best action for your business.
“80 percent of all Internet users have entered at least one sweepstakes within the past year – and more than half participate in contests at least once per month.” Jupiter Research (part of Forrester)
“Firstly, people don’t like being forced to be FaceBook members. Secondly, traditional online competitions aren’t public, but FaceBook is. You must publicly like a company, and often answer a question that’s open for all to see. These are real privacy issues.” From a survey on CompetitionsGude.com.au
Note that in the CompetitionsGuide.com.au survey many of the actions that people disliked were against Facebook’s Promotions Guidelines anyway.
– Does your competition fit in with your other marketing activities – online and off?
It’s more important to plan a balanced Facebook marketing campaign over the course of the year than to ‘splash out’ on a Facebook competition that may bring a spike in the number of ‘likes’ but no ongoing return. Remember that while a competition may bring you a number of new ‘likes’, if you are not interacting with these users on a regular basis with content that is relevant to them, these will not convert into more sales for your business.
A great example of a small business running successful Facebook Competitions is Puddleducks.ie. Their main product line is waterproof clothing for children and the competitions they run, on Facebook and on their own website, are
specifically targeted to parents of small children and relate to weather or children’s activities that would tie in withtheir range.
“Our Facebook page is very valuable to our business so we try to follow the Facebook Guidelines whenever we run competitions and promotions on the page”, says Aedan Ryan, Owner of Puddleducks.ie. “We have used theWildfire application to run Sweepstakes and competitions on the page. This ensures you comply with the guidelines – although it does cost a small amount – it also has the added benefit of having a more professional look to your competition. We also have run competitions off the Facebook page e.g. on our blog and link to it from our page. This is an easy and free way to comply with the guidelines”
4) A Facebook Competition can bring as much bad publicity as it can bring benefits – and of course, bad publicity spreads faster and farther.
Think through every aspect of your competition and plan for any issues that may arise. You are putting a lot of effort and possibly money into setting up a competition and you want to get the most out of it, but especially you want to make sure that the publicity you get is positive and not down to controversy or unhappy participants.
I watched a local business struggling with strong comments from its ‘Fans’ when a competition they ran went a bit ugly. An elderly man had misinterpreted the condition of the competition, which depended on the number of people that you got to ‘Like’ the business’s page (which, yes, is against Facebook’s Guidelines). He thought that he had won the competition, but when he found that he hadn’t he angrily posted a comment on the Page’s Wall and many others rallied behind him. The business was just lucky that the man hadn’t officially complained to Facebook, which may have resulted in the removal of the Page altogether.
This example shows how important it is to follow the Guidelines, carefully state the conditions of the competition and monitor all activities around the competition.
Even big brands are getting some heat in their competitions and Facebook applications. In July 2010, Coca-Cola
withdrew a application it was running its Dr. Pepper Facebook Page after complaints from parents. “The promo
tion,which was launched at the end of May, featured a ‘Status Takeover’ app, whereby supposedly embarrassing messages would appear in participants’ statusboxes to be viewed by their Facebook friends.”
The promotion was pulled when “a parent protested after finding that the profile of her 14-year-old daughter had been updated with a message that made direct reference to a hardcore pornographic film”. This clever application was getting a lot of ‘Likes’ to the page, but were these teenagers buying Dr. Pepper?
A baby photo competition run by UK Retailer Next, got a good bit of ‘interesting’ publicity. Information on the competition was posted by users on numerous baby and parenting forums, just what a business wants — but then there were posts saying that the competition was a hoax, run by paedophiles. Some believed that this rumour was started by a very competitive mother wanting to put others off entering. The company then had to battle to ensure people that the competition was indeed legitimate. See more here
5.) There are other ways to get people to ‘Like’ and get publicity to your Facebook Page
If you don’t feel that a Facebook Competition is for your business, then look for other ways of attracting visitors to your Page and get those ‘Likes’ in other ways. Ferrero Rocher’s underwhelming Facebook Page is a good example. There is little content and they have run no competitions on their Page, but they have over 7 million ‘Likes’.
“Around 7,000 people a day are becoming fans of chocolate brand Ferrero Rocher on Facebook, making the brand the sixth biggest in terms of daily fans. The reason for the brand’s dramatic increase in admirers can most likely be attributed to the combined factors of the popularity of the chocolate around Christmas time and a recently launched advertising campaign that featured a giant edible Christmas tree”
Facebook Competitions like most social media activities that businesses use, can appear to be very cheap and easy, but unless you plan your activities properly they will not be effective at bringing sales — and may even cost you more than you expected.