Facebook Invites

A Powerful Marketing Campaign – And How to Enhance It with Facebook Invites

I am usually not one to be enticed by offers, and consider myself somewhat immune since I am in the marketing business myself.  But I couldn’t ignore the following little item that turned up in my inbox last week:
 
“RECRUIT YOUR FRIENDS TO THE Blank REVOLUTION!
Earn 2 months of free phone service for each person you get to sign up.

EVERY 6 PEOPLE YOUR REFER MEANS A FULL YEAR OF FREE SERVICE!
(They will each get a free month too.)

POWER TO THE PEOPLE!”

Free phone service?  My friends get free phone service too?  Who wouldn’t be interested, especially since this is coming from the phone company that I have already signed up with!

One problem though – they are relying on Web 1.0 methods for you to “spread the word”.  You click over from the e-mail to a referral form.  Boring.  In the days of social networking sites, every single one of these campaigns should have “invite Facebook friends” as an option.

Why invite Facebook friends instead of using e-mail?  There are a few reasons.  First of all, Facebook is regarded as more of a user-controlled environment, so people are more likely to respond.  Secondly, people don’t like having their e-mails handed out, as doing so inevitably results in opening the floodgates of spam upon your hitherto most-loved friend. 

So how do we add the power to invite Facebook friends to such an e-mail?

Earlier this year I participated in a contest put on by Canada’s LouLou magazine that allowed me to invite my friends to participate in the contest.  I thought this was brilliant.  Through the Facebook app, LouLou could keep track of who I invited, how many times they played, and it also gave them a valuable marketing database of interested Facebook parties that they could mine later on for further use in their campaigns.  I was absolutely awestruck that my first Facebook interactive marketing program came from a fashion magazine and not from a publication like Wired.  The campaign was so successful that they followed it up with another, similar campaign designed by the same agency.

First of all, you will want to set up your company presence on Facebook.  To do this, you simply go to www.facebook.com/ads, and click on “Set Up Your Company Page”.  This is the easy part.

The harder part is creating a Facebook app.  The main reason that you haven’t seen everyone incorporating my suggestion in their marketing campaigns is that it is hard to do, if you don’t know anything about programming.  If you do know something about programming, you may be able to muddle your way through it at http://developers.facebook.com/step_by_step.php. 

I would suggest if you do not have any programming knowledge to hire a freelancer through one of the many sites available to do this, such as http://rentacoder.com.  Once you have the app, you can modify it (or pay very little to your freelancer to modify it) as you like for future campaigns.  If you do know a bit about programming, I believe it is just as “worth it” to spend a week or two on it as it was learning how to do web design back in the day.  Knowing how to create a Facebook app alone gives you an excellent income potential. 

It is very important to “strike while the iron is hot” on Facebook as I do not foresee Facebook continuing to allow this kind of application without charging companies money for it.  I give the lifespan of this marketing method 2 years at the most before you have to add it to your advertising budget.  Do not wait and incorporate this into next year’s marketing campaign – do it now.

If the company that I had received the e-mail above from had done it now, they would have been well on their way to 20+ referrals from me, and whatever organic results would have occurred through my referrals.  As it stands, they got nothing, because most of my internet savvy friends do not want their e-mail addresses handed out. 

If you are involved in creating any kind of e-mail campaigns whatsoever, it is time to either look for a Facebook App creator, or teach yourself how to do it – you can’t bury your head in the sand any longer on this one – do it now for immediate results!