In the
latest count, nearly 488 million users access Facebook using a mobile device. That's over 50% of the total 901 million users on the massive social network. What does that mean for brands? Facebook has planned a variety of mobile-centric products, including new advertising initiatives we've yet to see as well as the recent addition of
Sponsored Stories to the mobile ecosystem.
These game-changing mobile usage trends mean that marketers need to get serious about mobile, and fast. Here are three new ways you can build mobile into your Facebook marketing plan.
1. Mobile-Optimize All Your Content.
The introduction of Timeline to the mobile Facebook ecosystem brought with it a host of opportunities for marketers. When you consider that brand pages on Facebook Mobile have had almost no functionality — custom apps haven’t worked without a complicated hack-job, tabs haven’t translated, etc. — it seems possible that Timeline for brands was launched specifically to enable brands’ mobile Facebook capabilities.
While Timeline for brands currently does not enable interaction with custom apps (created for the fan page), custom apps
can be built to be mobile friendly. Where now users can access mobile-friendly custom apps just through specific links (not through the mobile Timeline) we will likely see a future update that enables the functionality.
Since nearly half of Facebook users access the site through a mobile device, your brand’s reach could effectively double if you mobile-optimize your social content. And because users will soon be able to experience the same workflow on their desktops as their smartphones, page managers will now be able to curate an identical experience for all users, regardless of viewing device.
Whether you’re building engagement applications in-house or with a social marketing software vendor, make sure the applications are seamlessly viewable across all platforms and devices. Ideally, you’ll be able to design once and deploy anywhere. That way, you’ll avoid messy synchronization issues, duplication of effort between creative teams, and working around multiple content channels.
Applications that use a “responsive design” framework are gaining popularity. The framework employs specific HTML5, CSS and Javascript technologies to ensure that the same content displays well on devices of any screen size. In the context of Facebook mobile pages, apps built within this framework can morph Facebook page tabs — for mobile, tablets and desktops — with one build.
2. Integrate Sponsored Stories Into Your Marketing.
Until early 2012, there had been no way to advertise to Facebook users on mobile devices. This has been an enormous lost opportunity for marketers — until now. Now, Sponsored Stories premium ad units appear in users’ news feeds (a huge announcement on its own), but also in mobile news feeds. Considering the many users who access Facebook from a mobile device, marketers now have a big opportunity to embed sponsored advertisements within mobile feeds. The challenge is how to make this work with your existing Facebook marketing program.
The most effective way to integrate Sponsored Stories into your marketing is to work them into an editorial calendar. Since Sponsored Stories stem from the activities of users on your brand’s Page, create a calendar of activities that translate well to the Sponsored Story format. For example, a local retail store could plan its weekly status updates, featuring in-store specials and colorful coupons as Sponsored Stories. Just make sure to use eye-catching images to help your promoted posts attract attention.
3. Use Facebook Mobile to Fuel Offline Campaigns.
Mobile-optimized social campaign marketing can also be used to enhance consumers’ in-store experiences. In fact, according to comScore,
36% of the U.S. smartphone population used their phones to perform retail research while inside a store in 2011. And
Nielsen states that, by the end of 2011, nearly one in five smartphone users scanned product barcodes, and nearly one in eight compared prices while in a store.
There is a lot of room for creating social campaigns with seamless mobile components, such as unique codes for scanning, in addition to more traditional social campaign approaches like promotions and exclusive content.
When planning online and offline campaigns, include in-store signage. This is crucial to the success of a mobile campaign, and is a key driver of participation. Many brands will advertise promotions on their Pages, designed to drive activity in-store, but do not replicate this messaging in the store. Unfortunately, this misses the in-store consumers who haven’t interacted on your fan page beforehand. Capture their interest socially first, then reinforce your message in-store to create a deeper, longer-term connection with the consumer.
The next thing to keep in mind is simplicity, which is the key to a successful social-to-in-store campaign. That multi-step scavenger hunt, which extends from your Page all the way into the shelves of your store may sound like a creative idea, but it will most certainly narrow engagement. Keep the proposition simple so users can easily get involved.
For example, Sprinkles Cupcakes consistently posts messages to its Page, encouraging fans to check in daily for a “secret word.” Fans who discover the secret word on Sprinkles’ Facebook Timeline can whisper it, in-store, to get a free cupcake. Sprinkles’ approach yields continuous check-ins on its Page, where other marketing messages appear alongside the secret word.
Marketers cannot ignore the staggering growth of users who access the Internet and social networks via mobile. Get mobile right and you’ve effectively doubled your social network reach. Start by mobile-optimizing your content, testing mobile Sponsored Stories, and linking mobile to your in-store campaigns. And please, share more mobile marketing strategies in the comments below.
(These tips were originally published in a
contributed post to Mashable.)