Let's vote.

GRIGSBY: (On phone) Stan! We need to convene the Twitter Task Force immediately!

STARKE: Why?

GRIBSBY: We just got a Direct Message. A big company wants to buy ten forklifts right away!

STARKE: Wow! Reserve the conference room. I’ll rally the troops.

Scene 2: The Twitter Task Force Convenes

KRAMER: Read the message, read the message.

GRIGSBY: This came through ten minutes ago. It’s from a big company. “Opening new warehouse. Need 10 forklifts asap. Electric. Delivery more important than price.”

STARKE: What a lead! What’s the name of the company?

GRIGSBY: The Bigg Company.

KRAMER: Sounds big.

STARKE: Do we have ‘em in stock?

FISHBEIN: (Looks at monitor) Yes! Thirty-seven electric forklifts on hand.

KRAMER: Excellent. Tell ‘em we’re ready to go.

DELINE: Shouldn’t we check their credit worthiness before committing to a price?

KRAMER: They don’t care about price.

DELINE: Nevertheless …

STARKE: Agnes, call Phelps in Credit. Have him do a quick check. In the meantime let’s draft a response so Grigsby can retweed them. How do we word our reply?

(Long silence)

Wow, that's a great lead.

GRIGSBY: No, no, no. Too long. We need to be short and to the point. And more conversational.

STARKE: Makes sense! How would you word it, Charlie?

GRIGSBY: Um … “Hi, we’re ready to help. Click here for a credit app and we’ll get it going.”

KRAMER: No, no. Forget the credit app. Just say we can do it and get me on the phone with them. All this talk about credit will spook them.

DELINE: We shouldn’t over commit. What if they place the order and then we can’t fill it?

STARKE: Alright. Maybe we can wordsmith a compromise. How about … “Hi … we’re ready to help … pending credit approval.”

KRAMER: Sounds tentative.

DELINE: You’re over promising.

FISHBEIN: How would you propose to punctuate it?

STARKE: OK. Let’s do this. Everybody write down the wording you’re comfortable with, and we’ll go around the room and read them. How does that sound?

FISHBEIN: Can I borrow a pencil?

Scene 3 – The Twitter Task Force Meeting Continues

(45 minutes later)

STARKE: Read it back to us, Agnes.

DELINE: (Clears throat) “We are ready to ship your high quality forklifts once your order has been processed.” (Sounds of approval)

STARKE: Let’s vote. All in favor of -

GRIGSBY: (Looking at his iPhone) Wait a minute! The Bigg Company just sent us another tweet.

KRAMER: What, what, what?

GRIGSBY: It says, “Never mind. Already ordered. Will try u again next time.”

STARKE: Huh. What now?

FISHBEIN: How about we set up a Facebook page?

THE END

Advertise on Facebook

6. Simple Ad-Creation Process

Facebook provides an easy-to-use ad template to simplify the ad creation process. Once you’ve created your first ad, subsequent ads are even easier to create by choosing the “Create a Similar Ad” option, which opens a new ad template that has the information from your previous ad already filled in. You’re then free to alter the ad’s content to create your new ad. Your new ad doesn’t automatically cancel the earlier ad, so you can run both ads simultaneously if desired.

7. Ad Content Control

While Facebook ultimately determines whether to run your ad, as long as you don’t breach the site’s guidelines while creating it, you can safely expect your ad to run. Within the parameters Facebook has delineated, you control the content of your ad. Facebook’s advertising guidelines clearly point out prohibited content to help you design an ad that says what you’d like it to say but that’s much more likely to be approved.

8. Automatic Ad Optimization

Once you’ve created and properly targeted your ad, Facebook will do the rest. The site will automatically display your ad on pages viewed by your chosen demographic. It will also indicate to your targeted users which of their Facebook friends have “Liked” or used your product or service. However, if you are interested in checking to see how your ad is performing, you may do that by setting up automatic conversion tracking, which can help you further refine your targeting and improve the ad optimization process.

9. Ad-Creation Guidance

Facebook offers clear and comprehensive guidance on creating and designing your ad, through its Help topics “Success Stories and Best Practices,” “Advertising Guidelines,” “Suggested Best Practices,” and “Common Ad Mistakes,” which provide numerous illustrated examples to aid understanding of the ad-creation process. To help new advertisers get started, the site also offers a New Advertiser Guide for download.

10. Ad Creation Support

Though not exactly live support, Facebook’s Ad Inquiry contact form does allow you to submit questions you may have that aren’t answered in the ad-creation Help section. While you may have to wait a day or two to hear back from Facebook about your query, at least you know you’ll receive an answer to your question. After all, you can safely assume that Facebook will be motivated to help you place an ad on its site!

Facebook’s Profitability and Simplicity Can Work for You

As you ponder your advertising budget and determine where your marketing dollar will go, give some serious thought to Facebook – a site that isn’t likely to drop from the top of the social media heap any time in the near future.

What are your thoughts on Facebook advertising? Do you view Facebook differently as an advertiser than you might as a consumer? If so, how might that knowledge affect your future Facebook ads?

David Ogilvy

Listen to the Podcast Now

You’ll hear Jay interview the authors of some of the most important marketing books ever written. Here are the authors you’ll hear from in the podcast:

Jack Trout, Co-author of Positioning
T. Scott Gross, Author of Microbranding
Jackie Huba, Co-author of Creating Customer Evangelists
Charlene Li, Co-author of Groundswell
Joe Sugarman, Author of Advertising Secrets of the Written Word

Jay included me as well, to discuss the last book in his lineup, Ogilvy on Advertising. David Ogilvy was one of my favorite writers in any genre, and it was fun to have an opportunity to talk about him. Thank you, Jay.

But listening to these authors talk about their books is the real treat in Jay’s podcast. They pack a great deal of marketing wisdom into five or ten minutes of conversation – ideas small and big companies alike need to understand in order to thrive in our increasingly complex marketplace.

Where's the donuts?

KRAMER: How’s the mission statement coming along, Agnes?

DELINE: Done! I hope we have time to review it today since this is our last meeting.

STARKE: Could I have your attention? Grigsby has a project recap. Any questions before I turn it over to him?

KRAMER: Where’s the donuts?

STARKE: Fishbein – get donuts! Proceed, Grigsby.

GRIGSBY: Six months ago we optimized our website for the search term FORKS. (scowls) We used a combination of on-site and off-site techniqes including a link building campaign based on article submissions and -

DELINE: That link biting thing still doesn’t sound right to me.

GRIGSBY: It’s link building, not link biting. And it happened to be the most important part of the project.

KRAMER: What makes you such an expert?

GRIGSBY: Six years as SEO director for a Fortune 500 forklift manufacturer.

KRAMER. Oh.

STARKE: Let’s hear the results. I’m sure we’re all eager to know how we did.

GRIGSBY: Here are results for our website optimized for FORKS. Over the last six months we received the following. Fifty-seven inquiries for silverware. Forty-four inquires for disposable cutlery. Thirty-seven inquiries for tuning forks. Twenty-one inquiries for pitchforks, all from Nebraska strangely enough. Thirteen requests for directions to the Grand Forks, North Dakota, airport. Three inquiries on how to break a knight fork in chess, and one inquiry for forklifts.

(long silence)

DELINE: Not bad.

STARKE: It’s horrible!

KRAMER: I told you search monopolization couldn’t beat my sales team!

GRIGSBY: That’s only because we used the wrong search term!

(long silence)

STARKE: Well … did we sell anything?

GRIBSBY: Surprisingly, yes. Kramer sold a guy a case of plastic forks from the cafeteria.

STARKE: Profit?

GRIGSBY: (thumbs through paperwork) Seven dollars and … thirty-two cents. We have a ways to go to reach break even.

STARKE: O.K., thank you, Charlie and the rest of the team. I know we all worked hard on this, but my recommendation to corporate will be to scrap SEO and hire more sales reps.

KRAMER: Yes!

GRIGSBY: Idiots.

STARKE: I think that covers it. We’re adjourned.

FISHBEIN: Here’s the donuts!

DELINE: Stan, can I distibute the mission statement now?

THE END

I have just become mayor… well, of my local Starbucks (and 12 other venues). No, I didn’t start a coffeehouse coup or anything like that. What I did was join the mobile game called Foursquare. It is the future of marketing and rewards programs. Warning: Stay with me here. Some of this will sound a little kooky.

What is Foursquare? It is a mobile smartphone app in which users can “check in” at locations near them to gain points and bragging rights (“badges”) for visiting the most places and/or most times. No interaction with the retail or other venue is required to check in since the app is GPS-location based. Your smartphone searches for your current location and only when you are within the physical range of the venue can you check in and gain points. (There are some who are hacking that system for fun and Foursquare supremacy. But I’ve not see too much of it.)

Those players who frequent a venue more than anyone else who plays Foursquare at that location attain the title of “mayor” which may entitle them to freebies or discounts. The goal is to obtain as many mayor titles as possible, especially by ousting the location’s standing mayor and stealing the title.

Foursquare also allows you have “friends” whose locations are visible to you as they check in to various venues. You can also tweet your location on Twitter and post it on Facebook. Then your social media friends will also know where you are.

Okay, your friends and social network will know where you are or have been and may have some ego deflation when you become mayor of yet another location. So what? Let’s see why its potential is so huge.

Free Social Network Advertising for the Location – If my location at a restaurant or other venue gets tweeted on Twitter or posted on Facebook, a link to the location’s contact info on Foursquare is included. That information is broadcast to the user’s entire social network. As well, users can add their commentary to the tweet or post. Imagine if the user said something nice about the place. Think others might be interested in checking it out because of the positive review? Oh, I think so. Make sure you encourage people to use Foursquare at your location with signage near entrances and counters.

Easy and Cheap Customer Rewards Program – Rewards programs can often be costly to market and administer. Why not tell your customers that you’ll offer some discount or freebie when they become the mayor of your venue? All the customer would have to do is show the server, cashier, or other customer service representative the cell phone with the mayorship confirmation message. You can work with Foursquare to develop other specials for certain number of check-ins or purchases of particular products or services.

Trend Watching and Market Research – Watch for target client prospects in your Twitter timeline and Facebook news feed that are active on Foursquare. You may find places and activities that are of interest to them, helping you to get inside their heads and hearts… and into their budgets! Are they frequenting restaurants with a particular cuisine? Do they go to health clubs regularly? How about favorite shopping malls? These are all clues of ways to connect, as well as good indicators of what emotional appeals would work in your advertising and marketing.

Conversation Starter – Several conversations on Twitter and Facebook have been started just by watching the Foursquare tweets or posts and then commenting on them. For example, I go to Starbucks a lot (as evidenced by being the mayor at two locations currently). Other Starbucks fans have connected with me because of it. And since I choose to delegate the major cooking in my house to professionals (trust me, it’s better that way), I frequent a lot of other restaurants, too. It’s fun to see how my network reacts to various check-ins. “I love their chocolate cake!” or “Can you bring me one, too?” Fun, but useful as well since I now know more that person.
_________________________________

Heidi Thorne helps event and tradeshow professionals and associations “Keep Your Brand in the Hand of Your Customers” with carefully selected promotional products and marketing strategies, including social media. Her “Promo With Purpose” concept evaluates marketing objectives, image, and values in selecting the best way to build a brand, business, and community. Visit her blog at http://www.PromoWithPurposeToday.com and follow her on Twitter at @heidithorne.

Bonus coverage: Here’s Heidi’s VIDEO about Foursquare:

FORKS

KRAMER: Here’s the keywords I’d like to hear. “HIRE MORE SALES REPS.” (laughs)

STARKE: Could you knock it off, Carl? Thanks to Deline and Fishbein, we spent three weeks on our mission statement. That means we have to wrap this SEO project in 60 days.

DELINE: What are keywords?

STARKE: The IT boys say (reads from memo), “Words people use when searching on Google to lease forklift trucks in Ohio.” Any suggestions?

(Prolonged silence)

DELINE: How about … FORKS?

STARKE: That’s good!

KRAMER: I like it!

FISHBEIN: Brilliant!

GRIGSBY: No. It’s no good.

KRAMER: What do you mean, no good?

GRIGSBY: Too broad. It’ll attract too many irrelevant searches. We need to narrow it down, like, LEASE FORKLIFT TRUCKS OHIO.

DELINE: That’s not grammatical!

FISHBEIN: There should be an “in” – lease forklift trucks in Ohio.

KRAMER: I say FORKS. More searches, more leads. It’s all about volume, baby!

GRIGSBY: I beg to differ. We’re better off with a high conversion rate on a low volume term than minimal conversions on a high volume term.

FISHBEIN: Huh? Let’s put it to a vote.

STARKE: (looks at watch) Great idea, Sheila. We can still beat the crowd for lunch. All in favor of FORKS say “aye”.

KRAMER, DELINE, FISHBEIN: Aye!

STARKE: All in favor of LEASE FORKLIFT TRUCKS OHIO say “aye”.

GRIGSBY: Aye.

STARKE: The FORKS have it. Nice work, team. That only took ten minutes. Next week we’ll discuss implementation.

DELINE: Stan, can we review the mission statement instead? There’s phrasing in the fifth paragraph I’m not comfortable with.

TO BE CONTINUED …

Simple and profitable: two words that would make any advertiser smile. Finding this winning combination in an advertising venue is one good indicator that that venue is one your business should seriously explore. Since both descriptors fit Facebook to a T, the world’s favorite social media site may also rank number one on your advertising venue list.

Let’s start out with five reasons why advertising on Facebook is profitable, because that will be your first consideration in deciding whether to even look into how easy it might be to place ads there.

Facebook Profitability Factors

In the following list, reasons one through five will relate to profitability, and reasons six through ten to ease of ad placement.

1. Site Popularity

Because Facebook is the number-one social media site on the Web today, with more than 400 million active users – a fan base that’s likely to grow even larger in the future – it offers real profit potential for your business. Facebook advertising revenues exceeded $700 million in 2009, and experts expect 2010 revenues to top $1 billion. These days, practically everyone has a Facebook account, and that simple fact can work to your business advantage.

2. Search Engine Ranking

Facebook’s immense popularity has given the site a high search engine ranking, which translates to more traffic referred via search engines. Since the site enjoys a Google Page Rank of 10 – the highest possible PR a site can have – you may be sure that Google and all the other major search engines pay a great deal of attention to the ads and other content posted there.

3. Interactive Marketing Opportunity

Facebook lets you engage customers and prospects through fan pages that provide both customer feedback and opportunities for marketing your product or service and promoting your company. This is a great way to increase the effectiveness of your ads and help create brand recognition and customer loyalty.

4. Ad Targeting

Facebook ads can easily be set up to target the demographic(s) you want to reach with your advertising. The ad setup process allows you to target by location, gender, age, birthday, likes and interests, education, and connections. This helps to ensure that your ad is displayed to the market segment to which it will be most relevant, increasing your likelihood of success.

5. Reader “Endorsements”

The Facebook “Like” button creates reader endorsements that can increase interest in your page and/or your ad. When users see that their Facebook friends have “Liked” an ad or a company page, it piques their curiosity, making them more likely to click the ad or visit the page. This factor can significantly increase your return on your advertising investment.

And That’s Only Half the Facebook Advertising Story

If you’ve found the above five factors compelling and believe that Facebook advertising might prove profitable for your business, you’ll definitely want to tune in for Part 2 of this two-part series, in which I’ll cover the five factors that make Facebook advertising so simple. You definitely owe it to yourself and your company to seriously consider an advertising venue that offers such incredible potential for success.

Over to You

How important are the above factors to you in selecting an advertising venue? Can you think of any other profitability factors Facebook offers that I may have left out? Are there any disadvantages you can think of to advertising there?

Straight North Can Help You Advertise on Facebook

Image Source: Facebook Advertising Web page (screenshot)

Expenses are growing by 5%.

KRAMER: Constructed for what?

STARKE: Search engine optimization.

(Prolonged silence)

DELINE: Stan, what is search engine operation?

GRIGSBY: Optimization. They’re talking about making our site show up when people search on Google for forklifts and other stuff we sell.

KRAMER: GOOGLE? We don’t need no Google. My guys hit 80 to 90 percent of quota month in and month out.

STARKE: I know, Charlie, but corporate says 2 percent sales growth won’t cut it.

KRAMER: Why not?

DELINE: (Studying income statement) Well, for one thing, expenses are growing by 5 percent.

KRAMER: Oh. Well, corporate should up the budget for new reps instead of wasting resources on websites and search opulization.

GRIGSBY: Optimization.

STARKE: Whatever. You can make the case for more reps in August, Carl. In the meantime, we’ve got 90 days to put this together. Once again, we’re getting no time, inadequate funding, and next to zero direction. I’m also hearing through the grapevine that half the IT staff is going to get whacked. Any volunteers to lead the project?

TO BE CONTINUED …

Here’s what I’ve got so far – what would you add or change?

Social Media Objectives for B2B Firms

Transactional

• Orders
• Qualified leads
• Build email list
• Webinar signups
• Referred site traffic

Market Intelligence

• Gather new ideas
• Evaluate customer sentiment
• Monitor competitors

Corporate Image

• Brand awareness
• Thought leadership
• Reputation management
• Community building and conversation

Company Services

• Customer service
• Technical support
• Customer eductation
• Event promotion

As the number one social media site on the Web, Facebook has a great deal to offer advertisers. In Part 1, we discussed reasons one through five of why your business should be using Facebook for promotional and advertising purposes.

To recap, Facebook offers these preliminary advantages:

1. Enormous User Base
2. Global Reach
3. High Daily User Activity
4. Large Blocks of Time Users Spend on the Site
5. Influence of Facebook Friends

Now let’s discuss advantages six through ten:

6. Sheer Abundance of Content

According to Facebook, people interact with 160 million “objects” (which include pages, groups, and events) on the site, and the average user is connected to 60 such objects. Multiply that by the number of active Facebook users, and you can see how much the potential exposure for your ad increases. Every time a user clicks through to another Facebook page, new, targeted ads appear. Therefore, the more items a user interacts with, the more ads he or she sees. The abundance of content on Facebook can only benefit your advertising campaign. Even while using one of the 550,000 active applications on Facebook (including games, quizzes, etc.), the 70% of Facebook users who interact with these applications each month are also viewing targeted ads the entire time.

7. User-Created Content

The focus on user-created content on Facebook encourages people to spend more time on the site, generating content and interacting with other people’s content. It also encourages more content sharing. Both creating and sharing content translate to more page views and a larger amount of topical content to which ads can be targeted. The average Facebook user creates 70 pieces of content per month, giving you more opportunities to target ads to topics that interest them and their friends.

8. Shared Content

Content passed along via the “Share” button makes its way onto users’ friends’ home pages and/or their Facebook notification pages (as well as into their e-mail inboxes if they’ve opted to receive e-mail notifications). Since Facebook users average 130 friends apiece, the number of people who could potentially receive your shared info (e.g., your company page, website, or specific offer) can expand quickly. Users whose information is public can disseminate shared items to even larger audiences. In fact, according to Facebook, over 25 billion pieces of content (including news stories, blog posts, photo albums, notes, and website links) are shared on the site each month.

9. Outside Website Integration

Facebook’s recent integration with outside websites enables users to interact with the site from other locations on the Web. That makes posting content easier than ever before and ensures that even more items will make it onto users’ home pages. This added content in turn helps sustain user attention and interaction with the site for ever-increasing lengths of time. More than 250,000 websites have integrated with Facebook, and more than 100 million Facebook users interact with the site from these outside Internet locations each month.

10. Large and Active Mobile Market

The 100 million-plus active Facebook users who access the site via their mobile devices don’t simply have enough enthusiasm to engage with the site while on the go – they are also twice as active on the site as their non-mobile counterparts. This offers increasing sales potential to any business owner savvy enough to earmark part of the company’s advertising budget to Facebook. And if the 200 million mobile operators in 60 countries that are actively promoting Facebook have anything to say about it, this already substantial market segment will expand to ever-increasing proportions in the very near future.

The Facebook Connection: A Digital Win/Win

So, does Facebook warrant a chunk of your company’s advertising outlay? Only you can ultimately answer that question. For most companies that have budgeted funds for advertising, the 10 reasons covered in Parts 1 and 2 of this post will likely lead to a resounding “Yes!” Yet, even smaller companies with negligible budgets can ride the wave of Facebook’s popularity by setting up free Facebook pages and thereby garnering tons of complementary PR for their businesses. Either way, it’s pretty much a win/win.

We live in a digitally connected world – and right now Facebook is the number-one way to foster that connection, attracting new customers and keeping established ones enthusiastic about our brand.

Which of the above 10 points resonate most with you? Or, do you feel, perhaps, that the current focus on Facebook is overblown and better ways exist for promoting our brands?

Note: You’ll find all Facebook stats on the Facebook Press Room Statistics page. (These stats are/were accurate as of the date of posting. If any have changed by the time you read this, in all likelihood the numbers will be even higher.)