The top three ways to utilize Facebook for business: An Appliances Online case study
How do you create brand trust and increased sales for an unknown online company? That was the question faced by Appliances Online, a pure play white goods retailer. The answer, Facebook. Utilizing the community potential and advertising opportunities provided by the social platform, Appliances Online successfully achieved a 60% boost in branded search traffic, resulting in a 58% increase in sales driven by branded search.
Engaging Content
The key to any successful social media campaign is great content. As a business, people aren’t necessarily going to engage with you simply because you’re on Facebook (with the exception of posting positive or negative feedback). Similarly, if you just post images of your latest products or bombard users with sales messages they’re unlikely to want to stick around and continue to ‘like’ your page. Appliances Online run fortnightly competitions on their Facebook page in which users play a game before entering their details and ‘liking’ the product they want to win. Competition winners are then announced on a live giveaway streamed in Ustream via Facebook. Fans are also encouraged to upload images to AO’s Facebook page of themselves associating with the brand. For example, when Appliances Online re-launched their brand with a smiley face logo, fans uploaded images of themselves to show engagement with the live stream. The success of this method of fan interaction is shown in the number of Facebook fans with AO recently reaching the one million fan milestone.
Brand Trust
One of the hurdles facing pure play retailers is establishing themselves as a trusted company. Although almost one third of all purchases are made online, online retailers still face the problem of not having a tangible shop that customers can go into and browse products. With concerns over online security continuing to abound, many customers still choose to purchase products from a physical shop, despite it being cheaper online. Appliances Online turned to Facebook to counter these issues developing a customized widget for the site which shows customers how many people ‘recommended’ AO on Facebook and also see positive feedback from real customers enforcing a trust message. If visitors to the site are also simultaneously logged into Facebook they also see if any of their friends have liked the site or certain products. These simple tools helped to create trust by showing images of real people who had bought from the company. Yossi Erdman, Head of Brand and Social, explains what impact this Facebook interaction has for the company. “Facebook creates brand trust for Appliances Online by helping us personalise the customer journey in an unprecedented way. We want every visitor to the Appliances Online website to see at least one Facebook friend who has bought from us or recommended us before. The positive effect on sales conversion on our website was substantial.”
Respond to Customers
While some companies disable comments by customers on their Facebook page, Appliances Online have embraced the conversation which stems from this social interaction. All comments and queries, positive or negative are responded to by a customer service representative with a target response time of 15 minutes or less. Each query is dealt with by the same customer service representative to ensure that issues are dealt with efficiently and are fully resolved. Far from being stiff, corporate responses the comments are friendly and engaging displaying the personality of the company. For positive and negative feedback the customer is asked their order number so that the appropriate feedback can be sent back to the staff member, if applicable. The transparency of Facebook (everyone can read other people’s posts and comments) further helps to contribute to brand trust.
Appliances Online are an award winning example of how an online business can successfully utilize Facebook with a view to increasing sales and conversion. By creating brand trust through their innovative content and developing effective on-site tools AO have translated their social success into results which have directly impacted the bottom line of the company. The next question everyone wants to know, what does the future hold for AO and Facebook? We’ll have to wait and see!
Written by Sarah Murray
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