The Tribune

MARKETING REVOLUTION

By D'ARCY RAHMING

A FEW months ago, a local retail client of mine asked me to help them with their Facebook strategy. During my strategy session I asked them: "What is the ultimate goal of your being on Facebook?" After a lot of back and forth, they said the idea was to drive traffic into the store while providing quality information to their customers. They felt the best way to accomplish this was through a Facebook Fanpage. However, they were disappointed with the results they were presently achieving.

I explained to them that no one is coming to look at their Fanpage just because it is there. Facebook is not the Yellow Pages or Google. People use both these mediums to look up information when they are finding out about products, or about to make a purchase decision. People go to Facebook to look for news and to catch up with friends. You have to actively draw people to your Fanpage.

So I designed an ad around a local athlete, who had lost a lot of weight using products that were in their store, offering a free guide on how he did it. Immediately the 'likes' on the pages exploded to 10 times what they had previously been, and hundreds of people gave their contact information for the free guide.

This gave an opportunity for the client to contact them for sales and specials related to the guide, and led to people coming into the store. I have repeated this principle of storytelling with success across several industries.

You are still reading this column because something about it got and kept your attention. You will notice that I started with a story. One question you should be asking yourself, when deciding if a particular advertising strategy is good or not, is: "Who is reading or watching this media, and why are they here"? Is it to be entertained, become informed or to make a direct purchase? Then you should design your strategy to get their attention, first by the way they are already using the media.

The storytelling principal holds true across all media where people go to look for news or information. For example, take a look at the ads in today's newspaper. You will notice the majority of them are product or service offerings, as opposed to stories of how the use of a company's product will help a person.

In my next article, I will tell you exactly how you can know that one marketing strategy is better than another.

NB: D'Arcy Rahming holds a Masters of Management from the prestigious J. L. Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. A lecturer at the College of the Bahamas, Mr Rahming has clients in general insurance, retail, health and medical fields, sports federations and financial services. To receive his marketing newsletter FREE go to http://DArcyRahming.com or contact him directly at darcyrahmingsr@gmail.com