5 case studies that show how to drive traffic and sales from your Facebook Fan base

Last week I featured a post from Wildfire's blog with tips on how to create great ads on Facebook. This week I'm featuring five case studies that Wildfire has put together on how to leverage your Facebook Fan base to drive traffic and sales using Wildfire's platform.

Tip #1: Turn your coupons into a game!
Online ‘private’ retailer Hautelook ran a coupon campaign with us but instead of just offering up a coupon they made it much more fun by creating an ‘instant win’ coupon game. After becoming a fan of the Hautelook Facebook Fan Page entrants were presented with a coupon but the value of each coupon was a surprise and ranged from 10% to 20%, and some had free shipping. The results were great! Not only did Hautelook generate thousands of new fans they also generated tens of thousands of sales in just one day. In fact, they generated a return on investment of more than 5x and over 20% of purchasers were first time Hautelook customers. ThePost Options great thing about this campaign is that it turned something standard like a coupon into something fun and exciting like a game.



Tip #2: Drive People into your Store via a Giveaway
Giveaways are a great way to engage people and generate word of mouth, but by offering a giveaway that must be picked up in store it can also be a great way to drive purchases. Digital Surgeons, a digital marketing agency, used Wildfire to run a giveaway for their client Edible Arrangements. After becoming a Facebook Fan of Edible Arrangements entrants received a voucher for free chocolate dipped strawberries. But to redeem the coupon fans had to visit an Edible Arrangements store – thus providing a fantastic opportunity for local Edible Arrangements franchisees to promote their store to a slew of new customers. This campaign was a wild success for Edible Arrangements – not only did it generate 170,000 new fans but it also resulted in a double-digit increase in sales from the year prior.

Tip #3: Drive visitors to your online store via a creative sweepstakes
Zappos ran a unique sweepstakes with Wildfire where they promised users the chance to win a $500 voucher for use at Zappos, but only after entrants visited the online store and put together a list of the items that they would purchase with the winning money, if it were theirs. This was a powerful way to encourage thousands of people to not only visit the Zappos site but to also create a list of their favorite items on Zappos, which, in turn, encouraged many consumers to buy.

Tip #4: Create lucky coupons to draw users into your store
Jamba Juice launched a campaign called “Feel Good Bucks” that used Wildfire’s unique coupon code generation functionality in a very interesting way. They gave out ‘lucky’ coupons via our Facebook Connect Product and Facebook Fan Page Product that could be redeemed at Jamba Juice stores. When consumers redeemed the coupons they either received $1 off their purchase or they had the opportunity to win one of many thousands of instant prizes, including cash prizes of $10,000! To make Jamba’s campaign even more fun and social, they combined it with Wildfire’s Virtual Gifting solution so users could send Jamba Bucks to their friends in the form of fun, Jamba-branded virtual gifts like smoothies, bucks, and cartoons. By combining the utility of a coupon with the anticipation of an instant win and the social channels of Facebook, Jamba was able to generate huge interest in their campaign and drive tens of thousands of consumers to purchase at their stores.

Tip #5: Use a sweepstakes to drive people to your coupon
In celebration of its one millionth Facebook Fan, Duck Tape launched a Wildfire sweepstakes, giving 100 lucky winners a Duck Tape prize package. But to sweeten the deal for every entrant in the sweepstakes, they also put up a coupon for $1 off a roll of Duck Tape, which was available for claim to anybody completing their submission into the sweepstakes. Sweepstakes are not only a great way to encourage users to interact with your fanpage and website but they’re also a powerful way to drive people to your coupon or online shopping cart so it’s certainly worth considering the combination of a sweepstakes with a coupon.

18 Super Easy & Effective Tips on using Facebook ads to grow your fan base

My thanks to Wildfire, the Palo Alto based social media platform company. This blog post was SO good and comprehensive, I thought I would share. As always, test a whole collection of ads, use different images, different copy, different headlines—then within one day or so, see which ones are winners. Pause all the ones that are stagnant and put the budget back into the winners.

Unless you have a large existing fan base or newsletter base, the best way to grow your fans is via Facebook Ads coupled with a promotion (e.g. contest or coupon). In fact, the #1 way that Facebook users find out about fan pages is via Facebook advertising so it is extremely important to your overall social media success that you know how to run Facebook ads effectively. Simple things like the image you choose or the title you use can make the difference between success and failure when it comes to advertising. We’ve compiled a list of practical, easy-to-implement and highly effective tips to help you maximize the performance of your Facebook ads.

What Images Should You Use?

Tip #1: Ads with people, and especially close ups of faces and eyes tend to get a higher click through rate. In other words, give your ad a human touch!

Tip #2: However, don’t use an image of a person if this doesn’t fit with what you’re promoting – ads with an image that’s relevant to your advertisement tend to be most successful.

Tip #3: It’s best to upload horizontal (landscape) images to ensure you’re maximizing the space available, which is 110×80 pixels

Tip #4: Include branding in your image. Only a tiny percentage of people exposed to your ad will actually click on it but lots will see it so it’s important that you maximize your branding. The great thing is that you can opt to ‘pay-per-click’ for your Facebook advertising so if someone learns about your brand by looking at your ad but doesn’t click, you just got brand exposure for free!

Tip #5: Scale your image as large as possible. Meaning, zoom into your image so that it extends as close to the edge on all 4 sides as possible without losing the sharpness of the image. For example, an image that contains one close up of a face will be more appealing than one that contains full body shots of multiple people, all of whom will appear so small in the photo that you wont be able to see any details.

Tip #6: Another trick you can try after your image has been created is take a large step away from your monitor and see if you can still make out what the image is from far away—if you can’t tell, the image isn’t as clear as it could be for a good ad.

Tip #7: Eliminate unnecessary surroundings around your main image, either by giving it a transparent background or a white one. You don’t want to distract people from what you want them to notice.

Tip #8: Use colors in your image that contrast with Facebook’s shades of blue— they command more attention and stand out from the rest of the website.

Tip #9: Be creative! You want your ad to stand out from the millions of other ads your audience is exposed to every day.

What Title Should You Use?

Tip #10: Ask questions. People who read questions to themselves are often sub-consciously answering them also. If your question is compelling enough, they will want to click through to see the answer.

Tip #11: Limit titles to one line.

Tip #12: Try titles that will elicit some kind of reaction from your audience, like making them laugh.

What Text Body Should I Use?

Tip #13: Be clear with your message – what are you offering and why should a user care?

Tip #14: Give a compelling reason to click: access to promotions (deals, coupons, sweepstakes, contests, giveaways) is the number one reason people become fans.

Tip #15: If you’re targeting users based on certain “Likes & Interests” or demographic information, tie that information into your copy. For example, an ad targeting users living in Palo Alto, CA, can fare better if the words “Palo Alto” or “Bay Area” were in the copy, making the ad appear more relevant to the viewer seeing it.

Tip #16: Ask people to like your brand— telling your audience exactly what you want them to do is a surprisingly effective methods of getting users to do what you requested. For example, “Fall is here and so is our seasonal pumpkin cupcake. Click ‘like’ if you think this sounds delicious!”

Tip #17: Don’t forget a call-to-action! Try messages like “Click here!” or “Enter now!” to let users know exactly what they’re supposed to do within the interaction.

Tip #18: Try not to sound like a large corporation in your body message. Speak to your audience like people.

How a 404 error can actually build your brand (and keep customers)

How often has this happened to you? You are trying to get some needed information on a website and whammo.....401 Error NOT FOUND pops up to your dismay.



Getting a 404 error (server not found) on a website or while trying to subscribe to an online newsletter can be a frustrating experience for the end user and leave a poor impression of your business. 400 or 500 errors are caused by broken links when a page is moved or deleted.

OK - stuff happens and you don't usually catch a broken link until it's brought to your attention. In the meantime, you have spent time and resources to drive people to your website and you are frustrating and potentially losing these visitors.

So what to do? Having a great 404 error page is as important as creating great content and can engage visitors while redirecting folks back to your homepage. It's a good way to create a second chance and reinforce your brand voice.

Here are some great examples of messages to get your inspired. Feel free to share your favorites!


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