This is part 4 of a 4 part series from WebBizIdeas on the core steps you need to take to engage social media.
We also have a great report that you can download with each step and examples of these steps in action. You can find that report here Social Media Engagement.
Monetization -How You Make ROI on Time and Resources
It’s important to note here that monetization in social media is vastly different for each company or individual. For some companies it will be very apparent—such as a T-Shirt company it would be acceptable to put a store on Facebook page.
Also we mentioned this before but understanding how your product, brand, or service falls in relation to intent. Remember that people do not fire up a social network with the intent on purchasing something. Will your followers tolerate your monetization strategy?
The good news is that for certain verticals special offers and coupons (one of the best monetization strategies) is the number one reason people follow a company or brand.
Key Questions for Monetization:
|
Examples of Monetization
Remember more than one department owns social media and when we give examples of specific monetization items the first two steps of acquisition and engagement came first.
Rite Aid Video to Coupon
At the same time, Rite Aid unveiled its Video Values program, featuring informative, educational and, in some cases, entertaining videos. By watching videos, customers earn video credits for savings on products.
For example, viewers of a clip for a Brita Water Filtration product earn a $2 coupon off one of the Brita items offered. They must print the coupon and present it at the store.
When they rack up 20 video credits, they receive a $5 Rite Aid Bonus Coupon. Rite Aid reports that it is averaging between 500,000 and 600,000 video views each month. Redemption rates average nearly 20%, depending on the coupon. (Fredricksen, 2010)
Social Coupons for a Mexican Grill
Rubio’s Fresh Mexican Grill, a West Coast chain of 195 restaurants, started placing coupons on Yowza this summer to reach people searching for a lunch spot. Larry Rusinko, the chain’s senior vice president of marketing and product development, saw a 4 percent redemption rate on coupons offered through Yowza, four times what he was getting through direct mail or ads in the Sunday paper. (Tiku, 2009)
Create a store right on Facebook
Storefront with Payvment: Payvment is an e-commerce application that allows for the development of a retail store on Facebook. Using the PayPal X global open payments platform, customers can shop from multiple vendors in a single shopper cart, turning FB into what could be considered the ultimate shopping mall.
The application uses PayPal’s new Adaptive Payments APIs and is built on the company’s existing shopping cart Web service that turns any online page into an e-commerce page with a single line of code. Another e-commerce app that lets users post products on FB is My Merch Store from Zazzle. Create and post products for sale on Zazzle and share them with people visiting your pages on FB.
Target On Tea
Organic tea brand Steaz needed to generate nation-wide awareness and drive sales at Target stores — and quickly. The brand felt that if it could get moms talking about Steaz in social media, the sales would follow. The campaign generated interest and results above expectations, thanks to blogs, email, and social media activity.
We were confident that we would generate 50,000 coupon downloads, 1,000 new fans/followers. Our goal was to get Target to notice the little tea brand it had just adopted.
Actual results were 250,000 coupon downloads (with a 20+ percent redemption rate), 6,000 blog and social network mentions, and more than 3,000 new fans/followers. Steaz’s December sales were double its previous best month ever. And Steaz shelves in Target stores nationwide were emptied. (Magnani, 2010)
Social Media Principals special report [pdf