Tuesday, July 29, 2014

How to Use Facebook Gated Campaigns for Leads and to Grow Your List

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-gated-campaigns/

By Jim Belosic
Published July 28, 2014

Do you want a way to grow your list, get better feedback or increase user-generated content?

Do you use Facebook giveaways and contests to collect information about your fans?

Action-gated Facebook campaigns require users to share specific data or feedback before they can enter a giveaway or contest.

In this article I’ll show you the concept of action-gating and how three companies are using it effectively to meet their goals.

Here’s a tactic to use to grow your list, get better feedback or increase user-generated content.

Why Facebook Gated Campaigns?

Facebook gated campaigns use a pretty simple idea called action-gating: A companyoffers a prize in exchange for personal data (like an email address or zip code).

Action-gating is a good way to collect valuable data from fans.

Action-gated campaigns are hosted on your Facebook page via a third-party appinstead of as a stand-alone update. These campaigns aren’t for collecting general comments under a status update; they’re for collecting specific demographic or contact information.

Action-gated campaigns require users to complete a specific task in exchange for something valuable from your brand, like access to or extra entries in a promotion, access to a coupon, etc. The user’s task may be filling out a form, uploading content, voting, etc.

Simply asking people to like your page (known as like-gating or fan-gating) to have access to your campaign doesn’t collect data you can use for business planning purposes (as you’ll see in #1 below) or future contact. Likes don’t get you extra content you can use across your other social channels to gain more attention. Action-gating does.

Require fans to create content to enter a contest or giveaway.

Below I discuss three examples of companies using action-gating to gather valuable information from their fans and followers.

#1: Collect Location Data

Uber and The Honest Company are examples of companies partnering to host an action-gated giveaway. Rather than using a like-gating tactic, they opened entries to anyone, whether that person likes either page or not.

Each business page posted a series of status updates with a link to the entry page. When users clicked the link, they were taken to a form built to require people to share their name, email address, date of birth and zip code in order to enter. (Of course, they could also like the Uber or The Honest Company’s page, but it wasn’t a requirement for entry.)

Uber offered a month of free rides plus a $500 gift card to gather extra fan data.

Sharing that much personal information is quite a hoop to jump through, but the prize is worth $500. When a prize has high value, people are more willing to share their information.

With that valuable fan data in hand, Uber and The Honest Company learn where their fans live.

But wait. Can’t you get that same information from Facebook Insights? Well, yes, you can see the location of your fans by city, but collecting specific information like zip codes takes location data a step further.

honest company and uber contest landing page

The Honest Company asks for just enough information to learn a little more about audience.

The collected zip codes allow Uber to identify neighborhoods that could be targets for expansion and gives The Honest Company (which makes natural baby and home-care products) insights into which retail outlets their salespeople should call on.

That kind of targeting is much more valuable than a plain old like.

#2: Gather User-Generated Content

Few companies do a better job of encouraging (and getting) user-generated contentthan GoPro. The fan-submitted videos often get shared and commented on like crazy.

To get customers and fans to share footage they’ve shot using a GoPro camera, the company has an action-gated Facebook campaign called the GoPro Creator’s Challenge.

For a chance to win $5,000 and have their video featured on the GoPro Network, fans have to upload a video entry.

Offer larger prizes to get people to take the time to contribute to a contest.

Shooting and uploading a video is more work than, say, answering a few questions on a survey, but the opportunity to win five grand makes the task worthwhile.

Keep in mind that GoPro doesn’t force users to like their page in order to enter the Creator’s Challenge. They’re assuming that people who genuinely love their brand and products will like the page because they want to.

GoPro’s personal reward comes in the form of high-quality video they can feature on their YouTube channel (which has more than two million subscribers), Twitter, Facebook and other social profiles.

#3: Round Up Potential Leads

Clothing retailer Lulu’s hosts a daily sweepstakes on their Facebook page. Their idea and execution are simple: Ask people to find a product on the Lulu’s website for a chance to win a $50 store credit.

Lulu’s hosts daily sweepstakes on their Facebook page to continually collect data from fans.

The feedback they get helps them determine what customers want to see more of. The beauty of this simple action-gated campaign is that any brand can do it.

Lulu’s uses a straightforward question that requires a short answer—a tactic that ensures a better response rate.

Also note how Lulu’s asks users for specific feedback—they steer entrants away from general comments. There’s no confusion on the user’s end and the task feels more like a creative break than tackling a homework assignment.

Lulu’s also collects email addresses as part of each entry so they can follow up with people outside of Facebook. This tactic is useful for a company like Lulu’s—or any company, really—because it lets them follow up via a customized email with a special deal.

Over to You

Action-gating offers more flexibility and value than a simple like-gated giveaway or contest. Collecting users’ personal data and feedback is just one way to use action-gating. You can also expand your reach by asking users to tweet about your campaign or share it on Google+ as an entry.

The key to successful Facebook gated campaigns is offering a significant prize that justifies the requirement for entry. The more you’re asking for, the more you have to offer in return.

What do you think? Have you used action-gating in a Facebook campaign? Will you try it in the future? Leave your comments below.

Demand Generation Necessary For Lead Generation!

by Merlin Francis, LeadFormix

Demand Generation and Lead Generation, can be easily voted as the most used words in the B2B Marketing space. I think marketers have an affinity for these words because they tend to sound more complicated and sophisticated than your regular marketing buzz words.

Many a times I have seen marketers use the above words interchangeably often leaving the listener/reader confused on the real purpose of each of these activities.

I am often asked by clients on what is the difference between Demand Generation and Lead Generation when the end goal for both activities is to increase sales and revenue for a company. A valid observation.

In this post, I make an attempt to explain the various factors that differentiate Demand Generation from Lead Generation, and why one is important for the other to succeed.

A Google search for Demand Generation Vs Lead Generation, will lead you to some really interesting posts which explain in detail how Demand Generation covers all marketing activities a company undertakes to generate leads and interest in its offerings. While Lead Generation is a subset of Demand Generation where those interested in the offering are then converted into customers.

The above is a valid explanation, but I would like to put this a little differently or rather look at it from a different perspective.

Marketing Vs Sales

I see Demand Generation as marketing centric and Lead Generation as sales centric activity. It is marketing's job to go out in the market, create a buzz and get the target audience interested in the company's offerings, while it is for sales to find the people who are interested in the offerings, pursue (read nurture) them till they take the final plunge and convert into a customer.

But this distinction has undergone a sea change in the last couple of years with the advent of Marketing Automation and it's increased adoption in the B2B space.

Today marketing is responsible for both Demand Generation and Lead Generation. So not only does it run targeted campaigns to attract prospects, but it also sifts through dozens of these prospects to find the hot/promising leads which it can pass over to sales for conversion. In fact today even nurturing a prospect who is not sale-ready is marketing's responsibility. So simply put sales just covers the last mile of Lead Generation, the rest of the journey is initiated and managed by marketing.

Industry Vs Company

Another way of looking at it is that Demand Generation is the need of an industry and Lead Generation more the need of a company.

Let me explain by giving an example. When the first marketing automation platform was launched in the 90s, it failed to cause the disruption it would have liked to create. But there was a need and there was a market for such a platform to succeed. As more and more players entered the market, the marketing automation industry as whole realized the need to educate B2B companies about the benefits of having a marketing automation platform. All players put a concerted effort in creating a demand for marketing automation platforms. They wrote content, held events, joined forums and slowly created an eco system of marketers, marketing agencies, experts and analysts, which advocated the need for marketing automation for increased revenue generation.

The result - At the end of 2010 there were more than 1500 B2B companies using marketing automation platforms and the marketing automation industry had generated a total revenue of $1Billion.

It took more than a decade and a lot of man-hours and marketing investment on part of all the early players for the marketing automation industry to become mainstream. They together worked hard on Demand Generation, educating their prospects and creating a market for their offerings.

While generating demand for marketing automation platforms, each of these vendors also focussed on distinctively establishing their individual value propositions, thereby generating leads for their individual offerings and acquiring customers.

We live in competitive times and most companies are concentrated in their efforts to market their products, often forgetting the value of educating their prospects so that they realize the value they are offered.

Also, today's customers know how to fish for the information they are looking for, they want to read independent and neutral views that help them take informed and unbiased decisions. In such a scenario its important that companies spend their marketing budgets for both Demand Generation activities like thought leadership, industry seminars etc. and Lead Generation activities like webinars, SEO, SEM, SMO, advertisements and PR etc.

In short Demand Generation is the role companies play in building their market and industry space, while getting themselves noticed as a serious player who is respected in the industry. Lead Generation on the other hand is the effort every company puts into keeping its sales funnel buzzing. Both activities are equally important in boosting the revenues of a company and build its market presence.

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